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1/ 

SEVEN DECADES 

\ 

OF 

THE U :^ I O K 

THE HUMANITIES AND MATERIALISM, 



ILLUSTRATED BT 



\ 



A MEMOIR OF JOHN TYLER, 

WITH 



THE TEANSITION STATE OF THIS NATION"— ITS DANGEKS 
AND THEIE EEMEDY. 



By henry a. wise. 



*' 'lis Liberty, or 'tis Death I' 

Looan: Runnymede, 

"Give me Liberty, or gire me Death!" 

Patrick Henry, 
at the " Old Raleigh," Williamsburg Va. 



]. W. RANDOLPH cS: ENGLISH, 
Richmond, Va. 

1881. 






Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1871, by 

J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO., 
In the Office of the Librarian of Congress at AYashington, 



JA 4 t^'JB 



M 



DEDICATION. 



To the rector, board o^ visitors, faculty, alumni, and students 
of the College of William and Marj, I dedicate this memoir of 
her late rector and chancellor, John Tyler, the tenth President 
of the United States of America ; prepared for the ax'chives of 
his Alma Mater, in obedieuce to her resolves and orders, at 
intervals snatched from professional business, and from house- 
hold hindrances and cares, since the meeting of the rector, 
board, and faculty in the year 1868. 

It has been to me a task of tears, dashed with some sacred 
joy, — a tale of sadness cheered and lightened by some exultant 
songs of triumphant remmiscence. 

Mr. Tyler's life ran through seven decades, from lt90 to 
1862 ; it is full of the themes of many and mighty events and 
thoughts ; it has a divine moral in its teachings, and lessons 
for the deepest study of mankind. 

Humbled by attempting the performance of this task, I pro- 
fess only a "joy of grief," — no talents for the volume of its 
labors. To bring that volume within readable compass, I have 
sketched a memoir, not altogether a biography, and not at all a 
history, — an outline not wholly filled up, — a drawing somewhat 
colored and shaded, but foreshortened to delineate salient points 
and parts in the important and impressive life and action of a 
good and great man. 

I glance, first, at the results of history just before his birth, 

(iii) 



iv DEDICA TION. 

up to the tiaie when he took part in events ; and then follow 
them until he finished his course on earth; leaving his country, 
in the midst of a revolution, the beginning" of which he saw 
and took part in, but the witnessing of the end of which he was 
graciously spared. 

I have treated of measures and men mostly affecting him, 
but have made free to indulge in episodes touching causes and 
eliecis affecting the nation duVing his time, and describing some 
of the men who were his cotemporaries. 

I make no apologies to the public for the work. It was 
written at the request of William and Mary, and has grown 
into its present proportions and form, to gratify my own affec- 
tions, and to perform a dut}^ of gratitude to a good, true, and 
faithful friend, who was much maligned in life, and who is now 
far above all praise. 

The writing of it has soothed some aching agonies of my 
own ; and my only wish or prayer about it is, that it may do 
good to others, and especially aid in reviving the hopes of con- 
stitutional liberty in a land which is still, thank God, the asy- 
lum of the free. Its aim is to direct the attention of a republic 
back to the " Humanities," from the " material and the physi- 
cal," which now preponderate and prevail too much over the 
moral elements of government and of society. 

The attempt is itself laudable, whatever may be the failure 
of the performance. If it is not thought Avell, nor grouped 
well, nor written well, it may perchance suggest something 
worth weighing to those who can think and group and write ; 
and with that I will be content. 

With the highest reverence and respect, I am 

Your obedient servant, 

Henry A. Wise. 



OOl^TEI^TS. 



CHAPTER T. 

THE FIRST DECABE, FKOlf 1790 TO 1801. 

PAQB 

The American Revolution — The Effect of the Reformation — The First Ad- 
ministration under the Constitution of the United States, during which 
Mr. Tyler was born — The Second Administration, and its Revolution of 
Parties in 1801 — Mr. Tyler's Lineage, a.nd the Peninsula on which he 
was born and raised . 11 

CHAPTER IT. 

THE SECOND DECADE, FROM 1800 TO 1810. 

The Aggressions of England and France ujjon Neutrals, and the Rejection 
of the American Mission by France — Commencement of the American 
Navy — The Effect of the Alien and Sedition Laws, causing the Kentucky 
and Virginia Resolutions of 1798 — The Presidential Election in ISOO, 
overthrowing the Federal Party, and diyiding the Democratic by the 
Contest of Burr for the First Place on the Ticket — Peace with the First 
Consul, and the Acquisition of Louisiana — Disunion Sentiments in the 
North in 1803, on account of the Treaty with France — The Lewis and 
Clarke Expedition — The Orders in Council, and the Imperial Decrees — 
The Attack of the Leopard on the Chesapeake — The Embargo Act — Pre- 
parations for War — The War turned over to the Madison Term — What 
Mr. Jefferson did for Science 35 

CHAPTER IIL 

THE THIRD DECADE, FROM 1810 TO 1820. 

Tecumseh and Tippecanoe — War with Great Britain ; how the Declaration 
of it was got at, and Mr. Tyler's part in the War — The Attempt upon 
Canada — General Scott, another War-made Man — The Navy on the 
Ocean and the Lakes — Blue-Lights — Cockburn at Hampton — General 
Taylor, another War-made Jlan — General Jackson — The Course of Con- 
necticut and Massachusetts during the War— The Hartford Convention 

(V) 



Vi CONTENTS. 

PAaa 

called by Massachusetts in tli« midst of the War — Peace saved the United 
States — After Peace, Imposts for Protection — National Bank in 1817 — 
The Colonization Society and the Republic of Liberia — The First Term 
of Mr. Monroe — His Conciliation of Federalism — His Cabinet — J. Q. 
Adams — W. H. Crawford — John C. Calhoun — Internal Improvements — 
The Erie Canal by New York — The Seminole War — St. Mark's — Pensa- 
cola and Fort Barrancas — Cession of Florida — Admission of Missouri — 
Ocean Steam Navigation, July 20, 1819 62 

CHAPTER IV. 

THE FOURTH DECADE, FROM 1820 TO 1830. 

The Second Term of Mr. Monroe — The Debate on the Execution of Arbuth- 
not and Ambrist-er — The Presidential Election in 1824 — Gemoral Jackson. 72 

CHAPTER V. 

THE FOURTH DECADE, FROM 1820 TO 1830. 

" The Monroe Doctrine" — Northwestern Coast of America — The Tariff of 
1828 — The Election of General Jackson — An Episode and Anecdote . 90 

CHAPTER VI. 

THE FIFTH DECADE, FROM 1830 TO 1840. 

Debates from 1831 to 1832— The Tariff of 1828 for Protection— The Com- 
promise — Mr. Clay the Great Pacificator — South Carolina Ordinances 
and Force Bill — Mr. Tyler the real and only Peace-Maker — The Presi- 
dential Election of 1832 — Democracy divided — Mr. Van Buren the 
Favorite — The Names of Factions — Mr. Tyler's Error of siding with 
Nullification — Difference between it and the Virginia Doctrines of Mr. 
Madison — The Conservative Purpose and End of a Convention of the 
States for Cases of Last Resort 119 

CHAPTER VII. 

THE FIFTH DECADE, FROM 1830 TO 1840. 

Bill to modify and continue the Bank of the United States — Mr. Tyler's 
Consistency — Mr. Tyler's Re-election to the Senate, to serve from the 
Fourth of March, 1833 — His Suggestions how to compose the Strife of 
Nullification — The Removal of the Public Deposits from the Bank of 
the United States — Censure of President Jackson by the Senate — The 
President's Protest — Expunction — Mr. Benton's Notice — Mr. Tyler's 
Report on the Bank and Debate with Benton — His Presidency of the 
Senate — "Three Millions Bill" — Action of Virginia Legislature on Ex- 
punction — Mr. B. W. Leigh — Mr. Tyler's Resignation of his Seat in the 
Senate, and Letter — Mr. Rives elected to fill the Vacancy — Mr. Leigh 
on the Verb " to Keep" — Scene of Expun<!tion — Election of Mr. Van 



CONTENTS. Vii 

PAQB 

Buren — Annexation of Texas — Tho Threat by General Jackson against 
France — AVharton, Archer, Samuel Houston — How Annexation by Arms 
was disappointed — The Boundary with Mexico — Jackson and Adams — 
The Sacrilege of D — ning Grotius, Puffendorf, and Vattel — General 
Jackson's Unpardonable Sin in the Eyes of Mr. Adams .... 134 

CHAPTER VIII. 

THE FIFTH DECADE, FROM 1830 TO 1840. 

Intrigues to make Mr. Van Buren the Favorite for the Succession — Judge 
White — The Effect of the Ambition of the President to elect his Succes- 
sor — The Election in 1836 — The Union of all Factions in Opposition, 
forming the Whig Party — The Election of Mr. Rives to the Senate of the 
United States in the Session of the General Assembly of Virginia of 
1838-39— Treachery to Mr. Tyler made him Vice-President— Mr. Web- 
ster's Opposition to the Nomination of Mr. Clay — The Triangular Cor- 
respondence — Judge White's Warning and Prophecy — Mr. Clay's Pledges 
and Committals on Practical Points — Judge White instructed out of the 
Senate by Loeofocoism in the Tennessee Legislature — Scenes with Mr. 
Clay in 1840 — His Habits up to 1844 — His War with Webster, resulting 
in the Election of Harrison and Tyler — The total Dismecoberment of the 
Whig Party before Harrison's Inauguration ...... 153 

CHAPTER IX. 

THE SIXTH DECADE, FROM 1840 TO 1850. 

Campaign of 1840 — Tippecanoe and Tyler too — Personations of the Divi- 
sions of the Whig Party — Tyler's expressed Opinions during the Can- 
vass — Dismemberment of the Whig Party before General Harrison's 
Inauguration — General Harrison's Health and Death — Scenes at Wash- 
ington City — Harrison's Cabinet — "Tyler too" President — What he had 
to do — The Harrison Cabinet retained — Mr. Tyler's Speech as Vice- 
President — His "Address to the People of the United States," and his 
First Message — Fiscal Bank — Veto — Fiscal Corporation — Ewing's Bill — 
Mr. Clay's Pledges broken — Why — The Ewing, Sergeant, and Berrien 
Committee's Interview with Mr. Tyler — Mr. Rives's Plan of evading 
Constitutional Scruples — Mr. Clay's Object to force a Veto — Veto Second 
— Mr. Tyler's Integrity assailed — His Firmness — Conditions of Peace 
tendered to him — Mr. Clay inexorable — Congress implacable — The Har- 
rison Cabinet dissolved — Mr. Webster remains with his Credentials in 
Favor of Mr. Tyler — Disposition to deprive Mr. Tyler of a Cabinet by 
not confirming any of his Nominees — The First Tyler Cabinet. . .174 

CHAPTER X. 

THE SIXTH DECADE, FROM 1840 TO 1850. 

The Cabinet — Mr. Webster; bis Social Conversation — Daniel Wisc^ — Hon. 
A. P. Upshur— T. R. Joy nes— Trial of the Gibbses- The Figure of Arith- 



yjii CONTENTS. 

PAoa 
metic and of Rhetoric— Mr. J. C. Spencer — Mr. Wickliffe — Mr. Legarg — 
Error in his Biography— Retirement of Spencer and Webster — Death of 
Legare — Second Session of the Twenty-seventh Congress — Its Measures 
— The Bank Bills — The Exchequer — Act for the Distribution of the 
Sales of the Public Lands, and the Tariff, and their Veto — Report of 
Mr. Adams's Committee, and the Protest — Mr. Thomas W. Gilmer — Dorr 
Rebellion — Impeachment — Loss of Mrs. Tyler — Persecution and Compo- 
sure of Mr. Tyler — The Cabinet renewed 194 

CB.APTER XL 

THE SIXTH DECADE, FROM 1840 TO 1850. 

Vacancy in Supreme Court — The Case of Vidal et aL v«. Girard's Executors 
— Sergeant, Binney, Webster, Jones — Reason why Sergeant and Binney 
declined — How Mr. Calhoun was called to the Department of State — A 
Personal Scene with Mr. Tyler after the Catastrophe of the Princeton — 
The New Cabinet 215 

CHAPTER XIL 

THE SIXTH DECADE, FROM 1840 TO 1850. 

Departure for Brazil — The Calhoun Cabinet — The Last Year of the Admin- 
istration, and Annexation of Texas — Mr. Spencer retires — Election of 
1844 — The Triumph of Mr. Tyler's Policy — Comparison with Jefferson's 
Administration — Mr. Tyler's Second Marriage — A Scene on a James 
River Steamer — Mr. William L. Marcy ; Anecdotes of him and Robert 
G. Scott, Esq., of Richmond, Va.— The Sherwood Estate of Mr. Tyler— 
His Appointment and Services as Overseer of Roads in Charles City 
County — His Retirement and Private Life — Professor Holmes's Slur 
upon him in the University Series — What he did in preparing for the 
Acquisition of California — The Effect of the Gold-Mines — The Revival 
of the Missouri Compromise Controversy — The South dwarfed in the 
Union 228 

CHAPTER XIIL 

THE SEVENTH DECADE, FROM 1850 TO 1860. 

Disparity of the North and South in White Population — General Taylor 
and the Election of 1848 — Mr. Fillmore — " Free Soil" Usurpation in 
California — Mr. Clay's Omnibus Bill — Death of General Taylor — Non- 
intervention — Election of Mr. Pierce in 1852 — Kansas and Nebraska 
Bills — " Squatter Sovereignty" — The Modern Republican Party — Con- 
vention of Seven Southern States at Nashville, Tennessee, in 1850^ 
Secession started — Judicial Blindness of the South — "Immigrant Aid 
Societies" and "Blue Lodges" — Border War enacted by Congress — - 
John Brown of Ossawattomie — Know-Nothingism — Election of Mr. 
Buchanan in 1857 — Dred Scott Case; its Effect — Kansas Troubles — Mr. 



CONTENTS. ix 

FAOE 

Buchanan's Failure to keep the Peace — Raid on Harper's Ferry — Elec- 
tion of 1860 : the Issue — The Plan and Meaning of Fighting in the Union 
— Mr. Tyler's Part-Peace Convention — Mr. Tyler's Speech at Baltimore 
in 1855 — Secession Fears of Halters 241 

CHAPTER XIV. 

THE SEVENTH DECADE, FROM 1850 TO 18G0. 

The Essential Rights of States — The Original Condition of the several 
United States — What Change did the Constitution of the United States 
make in their Sovereign Condition? — The War-Power of the United 
States — War-Power and the Power to repel Invasion in Constitutional 
Contrast with the Powers to execute the Laws and to suppress Insurrec- 
tion — The Prohibitions to the States — The Error of Secession — Instances 
of Insurrection and Rebellion — A State defined — The Primary and 
Secondary Elements of a State — The Conflict of States never an Insur- 
rection : of these States, it is Internal or Civic War, governed by the 
Law of Internal Sovereignty — The States invaded, and their Duties in 
the Case — Inimici uon Hostca — Dorr's Rebellion 255 

CHAPTER XV. 

THE SEVENTH DECADE, FROM 1850 TO 1862. 

Peace Convention — Virginia's Attitude — Rapid Rush of Events from the 
4th of February to the 18th of March, 1861— The Part of Mr. Tyler— 
His Speech on opening the Peace Convention — Virginia's Delegates 
disagree among themselves — The Rule in the Case of Ilylton vs. United 
States, as to Uniformity and Equality of Taxation throughout the United 
States, contended for by Mr. Tyler — Proclamation of the Federal Execu- 
tive, and its Effect — The Seizure of Harper's Ferry — Secession declared 
by Virginia on the 17th of April, 1861 — What Virginia ought to have 
done — Mr. Tyler elected to the Confederate Congress — His Death — The 
Obituaries— His Will 271 

CHAPTER XVL 

DECADE BEGINNING IN 1861, AND ENDING JANUARY 18, 1862. 

Death of Mr. Tyler — Proceedings of the Legislature of Virginia — Proceed- 
ings of the Confederate Congress — The Citizens of Richmond did him 
Homage and Sepulture at Hollywood Cemetery, where his Remains lie; 
and Honor was done his Memory even in Baltimore at that Hazardous 
Time- -Item in his Will touching his Burial 283 

Appendix ...» 305 



SEVEN DECADES OF THE UNION. 



CHAPTER I. 



THE FIRST DECADE FROM irOO TO ISOl. 

The American Revolution — The Effect of the Reformation — The First Admih- 
istration under the Constitution of the United States, during which Mr. 
Tyler was born — The Second Administration, and its Revolution of Parties 
in 1801 — Mr. Tyler's Lineage, and the Peninsula on which he was born and 
raised. 

"The dust on antique time would lie unswept, 
And mountainous error be too highly heap'd 
For truth to overpeer," 

bad not Heaven's messengers of the Reformation, in the latter 
end of the sixteenth and the beginning of the seventeenth 
centuries, broken its thick crust of ages. The smouldering fires 
of accumulated wrongs burst forth in Europe with more than 
volcanic force, shaking and scorching the Absolutism of the Old 
World, and setting human intellects free. 

Wickliffe, Calvin, Luther, Melanchthon, Cromwell were not the 
only ones thinking and daring and doing, but hosts of mightiest 
minds, in every department of knowledge and of truth, were 
scattering lights abroad to illumine the darkness. The closets 
of the Yatican were thrown open ; the secrets of the Schoolmen 
were revealed ; the stools of Dogmas and the thrones of Despot- 
ism were thrown down. Powers and Principalities were sub- 
dued to become the Protestant pupils of a divine faith of 
"good will to men," and were themselves made to question 

(11) 



12 SEVEX DECADES OF THE UNIOX. 

and confront Absolutism defiantly, with the cross of suffering 
and of martyrdom, for the sake of Truth. 

Tliis shock of old things, thought to be firmly established 
because simply hoary, and having custom without law, had its 
ample course. Students of the laws of God and of the rights 
of man were in the laboratories of the great school of the Hu- 
manities, and the Humanities were made ready for the occa- 
sion of their uses. Earth was crying for them, and they went 
forth to the call. Philolog-y, Grammar, the Hebrew, Latin, and 
Greek languages, Logic, Poetry, History, Metaphysics, and the 
Divine Philosophy of Christianity found the Printing-Press 
ready to give them the wings of the morning, and Columbus 
had already sailed over the seas and found a ]^ew World for 
their theater. Here, in North America, they found a huge, rude, 
barbaric continent, lying prone in a state of nature, ample for 
the fires and the blasts of all their mighty furnaces, forges, and 
foundries. 

In the mean time, Bacon had been at his inductions ; Oxford 
was teaching; the divines were translating and publishing the 
Bible ; Milton was singing ; and by the time America was 
ready for her first Revolution Burke had generalized the phi- 
losophy of human government ; Bourbons and Stuarts of old 
dynasties had been beheaded ; Hampdeus and Sydneys had 
asserted rights and been martyred; the Publicists had codi- 
fied international law, and the convulsions of England had 
settled some ideas of Magna Charta for domestic govern- 
ment. The people of England had learned to rehearse the 
noble Baron's chant of Liberty: 

"Let every Briton, as his mind, be free. 
Ilis person safe, his property secure; 
His house as sacred as the fane of heaven; 
Watching unseen, his ever-open door, 
Watching the realm, the spirit of the laws; 
His fate determined by the rules of right; 
His voice enacted in the common voice, 
, And general suffrage of the assembled realm. 

No hand invisible to write bis doom ; 
No demon starting at the midnight hour, 



THE FIRST DECADE. 13 

To draw bis curtain, or to drag hira down 
To mansions of despair. Wide to the world 
Disclose the secrets of the prison walls, 
And bid the groaniugs of the dungeon strike 
The public ear. Inviolable preserve 
The sacred shield that covers all the land. 
The Ileaveu-conferrcd palladium of the Isle, 
To Britain's sons, the judgment of their peers. 
On these great pillars, freedom of the Mind, 
Freedom of Speech, and freedom of the Pen, 
Forever changing, yet forever sure. 
The base of Britain rests!" 



These were the mig'hty throes making grand preparation for 
the working of new ideas. 

The American Revolution breaking out in lYGS, and brought 
to a denouement in '76, germinated thoughts wliich will never 
cease growing, until thej cover the whole earth with the aegis 
of laws made for the sake of liberty, not of liberty only to 
make laivs. 

1st. The right of self-government, in all separate communities 
defined into distinct peoples, requiring separate and difierent 
laws, and capable of either separate or confederate Jialionality. 

2dly. Self-government, guarded in law making and in law- 
adminstering power by limitations of authority in written 
constitutions of government. 

3dly. IVie demolition of colonial and provincial States de- 
pendent on central sovereignties. 

4th]y. Freedom, equality, and source of sovereignty in the 
governed, and responsibility and accountability in the gov- 
ernors of men. 

5thly. Sovereignty in the constituency or source, and not in 
the mere viunicipality of government. 

These were the five cardinal points of the North American 
system of constitutional republicanism. 

The forest-born Demosthenes did not catch songs of liberty 
from the birds of the trees in the wilderness. Old Logan had 
written his poem, and Runnymede was read in the forests 
where Henry hunted ; and it was thus that the orator's thun- 



14 SEVEN DECADES OF THE UNION. 

ders caught the notes of the poet's soul-music; the one singing, 
" 'Tis Liberty or Death!" and the other singing, "Give me 
Liberty or give me Death I" 

It was about this period of liberty brooding over States 
which had just ceased to be colonies of America, and ger- 
minating these indestructible thoughts in mighty men, that 
John Tyler was born. It was the age of heroes and of sages, 
and of battles, too, — battles of which those of the sword were 
only heroic, while those of the souls and minds of men were 
spiritual and immortal. It was the age which gave the world 
a Washington ; and the shrine of Mount Yernon is sacred to all 
men, next only to the unapproachable shrine of Mount Nebo. 
The Moses of the New World inducted these new ideas into the 
government of men. The novelty of this new government was 
the least difficulty in the wondrous work of -its establishment. 
Its magnitude was immense, and yet all its parts were aptly 
fitted together, and appropriate to all its far-reaching ends. 
The administration of the Father of his Country gave it at the 
beginning its true form and expression. 

His wisdom settled foreign relations on the surest founda- 
tions of peace and justice with all nations, and entangling alli- 
ances with none ; he firmly guarded neutrality ; he organized 
the executive departments. 

During his term were founded the judiciary, the land ordi- 
nances, the Indian policy, the laws of immigration and natu- 
ralization, a navy and military system opposed to standing 
armies ; and he so ordered the public fisc as to frown down 
the bad faith of repudiating the public debt, and assumed the 
States' debts incurred iu the Revolution. He restored the 
national credit, revived trade, and provided ample revenue; he 
protected the frontier against Indian depredations. He resisted 
Jacobinism from abroad, and, above all, taught us the applica- 
tion of the Constitution and laws to cases of rebellion and 
treason, using the military force as ancillary only to the civil 
power. In a word, under the auspices of the administration 
of the first President, grace, dignity, decorum, order, and power 
were imparted to the government of the United States; and it 



THE FIRST DECADE. 15 

was made to give assurauce to the hope of permanent and per- 
petual civil liberty, and commanded the highest respect of the 
nations of the earth. But there was one canker in its bud 
which needed to be dreaded, and has since proved to be de- 
structive to its bloom and beauty, — not yet, I hope, to all its 
fruits. It was the canker of construction. 

All then admitted that all the powers granted in the Consti- 
tution were guarded by limitations ; but two schools existed as 
to the extent and application of limitations. Jefferson at the 
head of one, Hamilton at the head of the other school, both 
of the first Cabinet, came into serious conflict first upon the 
construction of the words " necessary and proioer,'''' as to the 
power of Congress to create a national bank. The strict school 
contended that the power was not granted, and was, therefore, 
reserved to the States or the people. 

The school of broader construction resorted to the incidental 
powers. 

Mr. Hamilton admitted all the granted powers were strictly 
limited, and that the granted powers only could be exercised ; 
but that all powers " necessary and proper" to carry the ex- 
pressed powers into execution were granted and could be ex- 
ercised; though he admitted that they were restrained and 
limited in extent and purpose by their relation to the powers 
expressed. 

Neither contended that either the expressed or the necessary 
and properly relative or incidental powers were unlimited and 
unrestrained ; but, as we shall see, this memorable start of con- 
struction soon passed beyond all bounds of either expressed or 
necessary and proper incidental powers. 

The history of construction shows that in less than a quarter 
of a century the incidental powers, restrained at first^by the 
ends and extent of the expressed powers, were carried far be- 
yond the expressed powers themselves, which limited and re- 
strained them. And here commenced the first struggle between 
what then began to be called the Federal and Democratic 
Republican parties. 

Well for us all would it be, at this day, if construction had 



16 SHVEy DECADES OF THE UNION. 

not cari-ied incidental power further than it was carried by Mr. 
Haiiiiltoj, in his masterly argument, which won the mind of 
Washington on the Bank question. But the Federal party, 
under his august influence, succeeded in electing his immediate 
successor ; and the second administration met the portentous 
obstacle of a threatened war with France. 

The crushing conflicts of England and France for universal 
supremacy assailed the neutral rights of our country, and a 
provisional army had to be raised. Genet, the French minister 
in this country, had outraged our internal sovereignty, and 
the elder Adams recommended measures which were defended 
under the pretext of the imminency of war. His party started 
the doctrine that even thr-eatened war set aside the checks, 
balances, and limitations of the Constitution, and justified the 
passage of the acts of the Alien and of the Sedition laws, — the 
one act to remove aliens suspected of hostility, and the other 
to punish sedition, in forms violating the freedom of speech 
and of the press. It was then that the Virginia Legislature 
resolved: " That the powers not delegated by the Constitution 
to the United States, nor prohibited by it to the States, are 
reserved to the States or to the people ; and, therefore, the exer- 
cise of the powers not enumerated in the grant by the United 
States, is an usurpation of the authority of the States or of the 
people." 

This was in turn met by the Federal party assuming that 
whilst the States and the people of the States were originally 
the sources of sovereignty, yet they had delegated that sover- 
eignty to the Federal government of the Union, and that the 
Congress of the United States had, by the Constitution, become 
invested with the national sovereignty, and might exercise its 
powers and dominions over any and every subject of the " gen- 
eral welfare." 

The Democracy insisted that the national sovereignty could 
not be delegated, and could not exist in any one or all of the 
mere municipal departments of government, either executive, 
judicial, or legislative, — that sovereignty could exist alone in 
its source, the States, and that the people could act only 



THE FIRST DECADE. It 

through the organism of the States ; and that its very nature, 
under our system of republican constitutional freedom, was 
conventional, and not municipal; that the mere municipal 
functionaries of the Federal government were but creatures of 
sovereignty, and its mere trustees, servants, and agents, to do 
the biddings of the conventional power of the States and the 
people as expressed and limited by the Constitution ; that the 
Constitution itself was but the creature of the sovereignty of 
the States or the people, and was made by it the guide, and 
standard, and rule of legislative, executive, and judicial author- 
ity and functions, and that the Presidency, the Congress, and the 
Supreme Court each and all were but creatures of the Consti- 
tution. They were creatures not in the first, but in the second 
degree from sovereignty, and could pretend neither to be the 
sovereignty itself nor to have delegated to them its absolute 
powers, that the conventional powers of the States or their 
people alone could exercise absolute and unlimited power, and 
that all questions of doubtful or disputed power by the mere 
municipal Federal government, and either or all of its depart- 
ments, had of right to be referred to the conventional power of 
the States or of the people, in their separate State organiza- 
tions. Thus began the discord of State rights and of Federal 
absolutism. The Alien and Sedition laws were passed, the 
provisional army was provided, a regular army created, Demo- 
cratic members of the House of Representatives were insulted 
in the theater for words spoken against standing armies in the 
House. Mr. Jefferson, then V^ice-President, had to be guarded 
by his friends from his presiding chair in the Senate to his 
boarding-house and back ; the judiciary had, both in the case 
of Jay and of Marshall, become officially conjoined with the 
executive, mixing the chief justiceship in the same person with 
the secretaryship of state and the office of a foreign minister; 
and some of the inferior Federal judges had played the Jeffries- 
scenes over again so rampant that the whole judiciary was very 
much lowered in dignity, and finally Chase was impeached. 

The excesses of the second administration became odious to 
the States and the people, and the Federal party was over- 

2 



18 SEVEN DECADES OF THE UNION. 

thrown iu the memorable political revolution of 1801, when 
the great apostle of liberty and author of the Declaration of 
Independence was elected the President. For a study of this 
era we refer to Wharton's " State Trials," and particularly to 
his able, philosophical, beautiful, and just preface. 

Besides the canker of construction, other causes showed 
themselves during the first administration which brooded mis- 
chief, and from the beginning foreshadowed the danger of disso- 
lution of the Union, by reason of infractions of the Constitution 
and of infringement of the rights of the States to domestic and 
internal self-government. 

On the 12th February, 1790, the first petition was presented 
to Congress for the emancipation of slaves. It was signed by 
Dr. Franklin, President of the Society for the Abolition of 
Slavery. He was a philosopher " wise as a serpent," but not 
"as harmless as the dove." He had been chiefly instrumental 
as a pacificator in the convention which framed the Constitu- 
tion of the United States on the question of the apportionment 
of representatives between the free and the slave States ; but 
it seems that he was wily enough to resort to a more effectual 
mode of assailing the property in slaves and the power of the 
States which held them in bondage. Whether he foresaw that 
the dragon's teeth which he was sowing would sprout armed 
warriors or not, is not for us to say ; but he was either not 
wise in not foreseeing the consequences of his movement, or 
he was fanatically heedless of the consequences themselves 
which followed. It irritated sectional antagonism, aroused I'e- 
ligious antipathies, fomented jealousies and discord, disturbed 
the legislation of Congress,, and finally caused civil war. So 
much for the motives and action of the highest human wisdom. 
He was doubtless a man of peace, but was blind to the mode 
of preserving it. 

The Congress of 1790 was wiser than Franklin, more faith- 
ful to the Constitution of the United States, and resolved : 
" That Congress have no authority to interfere in the emanci- 
pation of slaves, or in the treatment of them in any of the 
States." And the territory south of the Ohio was accepted 



THE FIRST DECADE. 19 

without excluding slavery. What a contrast this is with the 
executive and congressional action in 1862, when civil war was 
made the pretext for violating the Constitution 1 

Another cloud, not larger at first than the palm of a man's 
hand, formed another prognostic of coming wars. The terri- 
tory ceded by North Carolina, out of which the new State was 
formed, was what is now included in the State of Tennessee. 
That territory was ceded by North Carolina in a deed executed 
by her senators under her laws, in December, 1789, and was 
accepted by act of Congress passed April 2d, 1790, just four- 
teen days after the birth of John Tyler. The cession was 
forced upon North Carolina by the acts of rebels to her jurisdic- 
tion, countenanced by Congress. The history of this territory 
shows the first and only instance of de facto " squatter sover- 
eignty" known in the United States prior to the period of the 
Mormon monstrosities in Utah, and it was the first instance of 
nullification. 

The settlers in the then State of North Carolina west of the 
Stone Mountain, complaining that they were not afforded due 
protection by the parent State, declared their independence, and 
set up against both State and Federal sovereignty a sovereignty 
of their own, called " the State of Franklin." They organized 
a State government, with all the municipal departments. They 
practically nullified in their limits both the laws of North Caro- 
lina and of the Federal government. They established a cur- 
rency of peltry, and the then governor, General Sevier, com- 
plained that he was cheated grievously in the payment of his 
salary, by having put upon him opossum-skins with raccoon- 
tails sewed on to them. 

They contended that his story was absurd, because if they 
had the raccoon-tails, they would have the raccoon-skins, too ; 
but he convicted them of using the same tails for numerous dif- 
ferent payments, and of stealing the tails again for the repay- 
ments. 

The United States, under Washington's administration, did 
not deem it a duty or a necessity to use force against this gro- 
tesque but flagrant rebellion ; but compensated North Carolina 



20 SEVEN DECADES OF TEE UNION. 

and pacified the rebels by admitting the Territory or State of 
Franklin into the Union as the State of Tennessee. But it 
must not be forgotten that by rebellion that State gained ad- 
mission instead of losing its place in the Union ; and secession 
and nullification were both sanctioned by the then Congress of 
the United States of America. Such, then, was the jealous 
regard paid by all to the right of independent self-government. 
And this, too, was a precedent sanctioned by both State and 
Federal authority, which fixed a habitude of thought and feejing 
and action on the very first settlers of this country, engrafting 
in them a ruling sense of the right of self-government against 
any power which either oppressed or failed to protect them. 
If it was not taught them by precedent sanctioned by Con- 
gress, its spirit was caught by them, assuredly, from the colo- 
nies, especially from Massachusetts and all New England and 
Virginia. 

It was in this decade, beginning with the first under Wash- 
ington and ending with the second administration, under the 
elder Adams, that John Tyler's childhood played. He drew 
his first breath in the atmosphere of the wisdom of "Washing- 
ton, and his mind was imbued from his cradle with the spirit of 
the age of reformation, resulting in the men and the events of 
the American Revolution. 

' He was at his grammar-school just at the moment when the 
doctrines of State and popular sovereignty began to be success- 
fully taught, and became triumphant for half a century of the 
future from that time. He was taught and trained in the school 
of strict construction of the Constitution and of the sovereignty 
of the States or the people, and in the principles of the school 
of Democracy, — a school which never sought to lower itself in 
the mud of manners and morals, and to pull all men down to 
the depth of vulgar mobocracy ; but one which, like a mighty 
charity, sought to build up a broad platform high as kings' 
crowns, to reach down the strong arm of popular sovereignty 
to raise all men, the lea,st and lowest, up to that exalted level ; 
ay, as high as possible, near to God ! 

He was thoroughly and fully imbued by birth, by educa- 



TEE FIRST DECADE. 21 

tion, by the men and events around him, with the spirit 
and the truths of times resorting to revolution and reform for 
liberty. 

His father's residence at the time was at Greenway, near 
Charles City Court House. His cradle was rocked there, and 
all his childhood was nurtured at that locality. For his parent- 
age and family history, we condense a statement prepared by 
his son, John Tyler, Jr., Esq. He says that he was born at 
Greenway, on the twenty-ninth day of March, a.d. 1790. In 
the paternal line he was the fifth in descent from the first in 
Virginia bearing the same name, who, together with his brother 
Henry, came at an early period to the colony at Jamestown ; 
and eventually, in the year 1636, established themselves in the 
Middle Plantations, intermediate between the settlements at 
Jamestown and Yorktown, embracing the present city of Wil- 
liamsburg and its adjacent country. Henry located himself on 
the spot where Williamsburg was laid out, in 1690 ; and the 
lands upon which the palace of the royal governor was erected, 
together with those upon which the college itself was built, 
were acquired from his estate. 

John located himself four miles from the present site of Wil- 
liamsburg, where the round brick house constructed for his resi- 
dence still stands, — now called Warburton's, in the county of 
James City. 

These brothers, John and Henry Tyler, were younger mem- 
bers of the ancient Shropshire family, originally from Wales, 
recently and at present represented in Great Britain, in the 
elder line, by the late Sir William and the present Sir Charles 
of the Parliament and the Admiralty. They were of orginal 
Norman and Welsh extraction. 

Who the first John Tyler of Virginia married, is unknown, 
the records of James City County having been repeatedly de- 
stroyed. They were destroyed in Bacon's Rebellion, in 1616. 
Again when the old capitol was burnt, and again during the 
late war of secession. What remained at Williamsburg were 
transferred to Richmond, and they were burnt in the conflagra- 
tion of that city in 1865 ; and most family records of the penin- 



22 SEVEN DECADES OF THE UNION. 

sula of York and James Rivers were destroyed in the wars of 
1776, of 1812, and of 1861. 

The son of the first John Tyler was known as John Tyler, 
Esq. He was a man of note in his day, and married his 
cousin, Elizabeth Tyler. His son John, the third John Tyler, 
was, by royal appointment, marshal of the colony. John 
Tyler, the marshal, married Anne Contesse, the daughter 
i>f Dr. Lewis Contesse, a French Huguenot of nerve and 
character. 

He left several daughters, and two sons, John and Lewis. 
John, the elder, and the father of President Tyler, lived to 
attain high honors. He was a distinguished Revolutionary 
patriot, and a zealous leader in the cause of the American 
colonies. He was an eminent jurist, and as judge of admiralty 
he decided the first prize case which occurred after independence 
was declared, holding his court under a large golden willow, 
which stood in the yard at Greeuway. He was the bosom 
friend of Thomas Jefferson. After independence was achieved, 
he was speaker of the House of Burgesses, and was a judge of 
the State District Court ; was governor of the State from 1808 
to 1811, and ultimately judge of the United States District 
Court until he died. 

Many rare and rich anecdotes are told of his life. At the 
christening of his first-born son, when the name of the child 
was announced, — "Wat Henry Tyler," — Mr. Henry being pres- 
ent and somewhat surprised, nervously asked " why that name 
was selected." The mother replied, "We have so named 
him, sir, after the two greatest British rebels, Wat Tyler and 
Patrick Henry." And the watch-seal which he wore when he 
died was presented to him by Mr. Jefferson, with the initials 
" T. J." engraved on its face, reading forward " Thomas Jeifer- 
sou," and backward "John Tyler." 

In Abell's " Life of President Tyler," we have a sweet story 
of his saving Patrick Henry from an awful repulse by a hostess, 
who, when told that they were members of the House of Bur- 
gesses flying before Arnold's invasion, was indignant that they 
were running away when her husband had just left her to meet 



THE FIRST DECADE. 23 

the invader. He had to vouch for Mr. Henry's being: himself; 
and when convinced of that fact, such was her confidence in 
him that if he ran away, all was right; it obtained for them 
shelter and food for the night. 

Another anecdote illustrative of the man, and not yet written, 
was related by the late General M. Pitts, the father of Judge 
E. P. Pitts, late of the Norfolk Circuit. He was a student of 
law in the office of John Wise, on the Eastern Shore of Vir- 
ginia, and when he was ready to apply for his license, Mr. 
Wise gave him a letter to Judge Tyler, then of the District 
Court, residing at Norfolk. He was a young aian of great 
promise, and afterwards distinguished in his profession, but 
was exceedingly diffident and awkward. He reached Norfolk, 
and easily found the judge's office, but the judge was not in. 
His clerk received young Pitts politely, took his letter of intro- 
duction, and invited him to await the judge's return, expected 
every moment. He sat down, anxiously awaiting the awful 
appearance of the strange judge. Suddenly a fine horse dashed 
up to the office door, mounted by a grand-looking, erect rider, 
venerable and commanding in his mien, with powdered hair 
neatly queued, wearing the shad-cut coat with long-flap waist- 
coat, shirt ruffled at bosom and wristbands, with shorts and knee- 
buckles and white topboots. He dismounted abruptly, stalked 
in, dashed off his buck-skin gauntlets, threw his whip on the 
table, and began to walk and talk to himself, violently exclaim- 
ing, " Yes 1 I will teach the upstart what the rights of land 
proprietors are ! He is so little of a gentleman, and so much 
of an ignoramus, that he has no idea of land-titles or rights, 
or the laws which protect them !" 

The truth was he had had a hot collision with the " super- 
visor" of the streets, who had encroached, as he thought, on his 
lot, and he had returned to his office before his passion was cool, 
and neither his clerk nor Pitts knew what the soliloquy was 
about. He had entered without noticing young Pitts, and con- 
tinued soliloquizing aloud as he stalked the room, swearing not 
a little, and commenting in such a mood that the clerk did not 
venture to present the letter of young Pitts, who sat trembling 



24 SEVEN DECADES OF THE UNION. 

with apprehension. " Was ever judge in such a humor wooed 
for a law license ?" 

At last the clerk caught a lull in the storm, and handed him 
the letter. Pitts timidly rose, and the judge, holding the letter, 
read it, and exclaimed, " Young gentleman, my friend John 
Wise, Esq., tells me you wish to be a lawyer." 

"Yes, sir," replied Pitts, "if you will be pleased to sign my 
license ; but — but — I can come at another time, if it please you, 
sir, better." He hoped to be let off from the hour of wrath and 
bad omens for lenity in the examination. 

The judge exclaimed, " No, young gentleman ; I can tell now 
by a single question whether you are fit to be a lawyer or 
not." Then raising his voice to a higher pitch, he asked, 
" Can you tell me the meaning of the word 'supervisor V " 

Pitts was overwhelmed: he thought there was a "catch" in 
the word ; perplexed, he looked down, tasted his lips for a 
reply, the judge's eye glaring on him bewildered. At last, hesi- 
tatingly and half choked, he muttered, " Judge, I — I hardly — 
know — any technical — meaning, — but — suppose — its common 
meaning is — ' super' — ' over' — and * video' to see — the noun — 
* overseer !' " 

Eagerly the judge exclaimed, " Yes, young man, you have 
hit it exactly. He is on the stilts of ' supervisor,'' ]\xs,i as if he 
was lord of the manors and of all the owners, and all the time 
he is nothing but ad — d vulgar 'overseer.'' You know the 
meaning of words, sir, and interpret truly, and are fit to be a 
lawyer. Give me your license, and I will sign it with pleasure.' 

In a moment he was calm, signed the license, pressed upon 
young Pitts every kindness, and sent him back home rejoicing ! 

December 11th, 1808, in a note dated at Greenway, he ac- 
cepted the office of governor of Virginia, and he filled that 
office with distinguished vigor of intellect and nerve for about 
three years, resigning to accept the office of judge of the Dis- 
trict Court of the United States, which office he honored until 
his death in 1813. 

One has but to read his messages whilst governor to see the 
intellect, the integrity, the courage, the patriotic fervor, the 



THE FIRST DECADE 25 

pure and stern republicanism, and the prophetic power of a 
watchful, jealous lover of popular liberty. In his message of 
December 3d, 1810, denouncing the effects of foreign influ- 
ence and commerce upon our country and its destiny, he 
said : " It produces also what is called in polite circles citizens 
of the world, — the worst citizens in the world, who, having no 
attachments to any country, make to themselves wings to fly 
awa}^ with from impending dangers." Again, speaking of 
the Court of Appeals, he denounced its example and habit of 
relying so much upon British cases as precedents, applying to 
cases under American institutions. He seems to have bad an 
instinctive perception of the danger of citing the maxims of 
British monarchy, and the doctrines and dogmas laid down by 
Blackstone, and by judges who were keepers of a king's con- 
science. 

He was afraid of the effect which he foresaw it would have, 
and has had, in gradually undermining republican ideas and 
overthrowing the sovereignty of the people. He accused the 
highest court and the bar of British " case mania," and of sub- 
serviency to their lordships and barons of British courts. He 
urged the duty of revising and codifying the common law, se- 
lecting only such of its maxims and such of its popular princi- 
ples as suited our system of democracy, taking its maxims 
without its cases ; proving propositions by the maxims, not 
proving the maxims by the propositions ; and ends by saying: 
" Shall we forever administer our free republican government 
on principles of rigid high-toned monarchy ? I almost blush 
for my country when I think of these things !" 

January 15th, 1811, he notified the legislature that he had 
accepted the judgeship of the United States District Court 
of Yirginia ; and he was succeeded in the office of governor 
by James Monroe. He was a noble specimen of the "booted 
and spurred cavalier" of colonial times, — a ruffled gentleman 
of great learning and mental force, and a man of unspotted 
name for honor, truth, integrity, and pluck. He was univer- 
sally known, respected, and loved throughout the State, — so 
much so that, though in the midst of the war when he died, in 



26 SEVEN- DECADES OF THE UNION. 

1813, the General Assembly paid his remains and memory un- 
usual honors, such as have never been paid to those of any man, 
except the Father of his Country, before or since. 

The maternal line of President Tyler was not less distin- 
guished. His mother was Mary Armistead, of Buck Rowe, in 
the county of Elizabeth City, on the Back River, looking out 
upon the Chesapeake Bay, and in sight of now Fortress 
Alonroe. 

The Armisteads, of Buck Rowe, and those of Hesse, in Mat- 
thews, formerly a part of Gloucester, in Virginia, sprang from 
the Hesse Armistead family in Germany. The propositus of 
this family came from England in the seventeenth century, and 
fixed his residence at Hesse, in the county of what was then 
called Gloucester, on the south bank, and near the mouth, of 
Piankatank River. The daughters of this family have been 
strikingly remarkable for their strength of character and beauty 
of person, and the continuous line of male descendants has 
marked the name of hero after hero on the tablets of their 
country's history. The " Star- Spangled Banner" is blended 
with the name of Colonel George Armistead, the defender of 
Fort McHenry in the war of 1812'. He was fighting the in- 
vader while Francis Key was writing the anthem, " our flag 
is still there 1" His brother. General Walker Armistead, won 
bis laurels and lost an arm in the same brilliant battle. Two 
other brothers lost their lives in the assault upon Fort Erie, in 
the war of- 1812; and he who was lately killed at Gettysburg, 
leading a Confederate division against " certain death," was 
the son of General Walker Armistead. Armistead T. Mason, 
senator of the United States, through his mother; and Gary 
and William Selden, through their mother ; and General Robert 
E. Lee, through his ancestress, Judith Armistead ; and Presi- 
dent John Tyler, through his mother, Mary Armistead, all alike 
in the maternal line sprang from the root of the same family tree. 

But no matter what her blood, or whether she could trace a 
title from what is now derisivel}'- called the F. F. Y.'s or not, she 
was Mary Armistead, of Buck Rowe, instinct with life, beauty, 
and virtue ; and we emphatically pronounce, from all that ia 



THE FIRST DECADE. 27 

known and can be gathered from tradition, that one of the pre- 
vailing causes of the gi-eatness of the men of that period, was 
the lovely and noble character of the mothers of the men of 
that day. 

They were eminently strong, and yet pure, refined, chaste, 
delicate, and modest, given to household cares, frugal, practical, 
and compelled to be heedful of the life and its events around 
them, challenging the practice of wisdom and virtue, and de- 
manding every effort of body and mind. 

Mary Armistead, like most other ladies of her dyy, was, — 

"One 
Not learned, save in gracious household ways; 
Not perfect, nay, but full of tender wants; 
No angel, but a dearer being, all dipt 
In angel instincts, breathing Paradise, 
Interpreter between the gods and men ; 
Who looked all native to her place, and yet 
On tiptoe seemed to touch upon a sphere 
Too gross to tread, and all male minds perforce 
Swayed to her from their orbits as they moved. 
And girdled her with music. Happy he 
AVith such a mother ! faith in womankind 
Beats with his blood, and trust in all things high 
Comes easy to him, and though he trip and fall 
He shall not blind his soul with clay." 

Woman, as well as man, had her part in the great dramas 
then acted, and her part required great naturalness as well as 
romance, and uncommon grace as well as a capacity for great 
uses, in her acting. The women at that day were principally 
formed by education at home. There was no meretricious train- 
ing of misses at the domestic schools where mother was mis- 
tress. Rarely a few " finished" at some such school as Mrs. 
Davenport's, at Williamsburg. We remember well the cramped, 
Italian-like chirography of the last of the pupils of that school. 

These pupils were bland in their tone as the proudest dames 
of court when the colony had a palace ; and yet they were 
taught to cut out and cure hams of cherry-red juices sweeter 
tliau tlie " Be Vau"-raised of Westphalia; they could arrange 



28 SEVEN- DECADES OF THE UNION. 

the warping-bars, turn the spindles, wind the skein, darn the 
stockings, and, walking over the floors of waxen cleanness, see 
to pantry and laundry. And oh, what sweet charities their 
perfumed presence shed around home, husband, and children, 
guests, servants, the poor, and the church I Physicians and 
nurses skilled in every balmy herb and soothing salve, at home 
and in the neighborhood around, blessing and blessed by all, 
they could not but be fresh and fair, and happy as beautiful. 
One supreme dutj marked these mothers. All had to work, 
and the lessons of the children must be gotten, come what 
would. Even war did not more than stay that duty; and the 
long winter nights were the happiest hours for the homestead 
tasks. Feast and frolic made the house warm and bright for 
children and servants when the tasks were done. Sons and 
daughters at all odds, even amidst the whirring of spindles and 
the rumbling of warping-bars for woof and web to clothe fami- 
lies in domestic fine linen, had to study their lessons until the 
tasks were relieved by waiters full of nuts and cakes and taffy, 
brought in as signals of fun and tale-telling, and chitchat bois- 
terous with glee, until the hour of rest, when all tiptoed to bed. 
These were no rude scenes of peasantry or yeomanry. Gentle 
manners, grace, order, and decorum, presided in stately form, 
but bright and cheerful. The mother of these domestic scenes, 
when an affair of state came on, was a queenly woman, — high, 
commanding, stately, whether at the table or in the saloon, at 
the dinner or in the dance ; she could talk of stately matters 
with bewitching wisdom, or play her smiling, classic wit or 
humor like a fairy, and command men to do her homage, due 
only to dignity, sense, sweetness, and grace. And when the 
season of chirping spring would come, flowers of sweetness 
and of taste bloomed around her; midsummer's harvest was 
made to smile with her bounty, and autumn's fruits were pi*e- 
served by her, — thoughtful provisions for coming winter. She 
made home happy and healthful as it was hospitable, without 
stint, or sham, or seeming. To guest and family alike it was a 
warm home of unaffected, liberal, wooing welcome. There was 
no place on earth where the word " domesticity" — sacred to the 



THE FIRST DECADE. 29 

household gods — meant more than it did then at such homes 
as Greenway and Buck Rowe, in the plantations of all the 
peninsulas of the Chesapeake Bay of Virginia. 

The homes of Greenway and Buck Rowe were made one 
house by the marriage of John Tyler and Mary Armistead, the 
father and mother of Jolm Tyler, Jr. And we should omit a 
pertinent and poetic theme in its story if we did not sketch at 
least a description of the Peninsula and the population in 
W'hich these homes flourished and bore such precious fruits in 
their day and generation. 

Greenway and Warburton are in a section of the Peninsula 
between the historical, majestic James and the consecrated 
banks of the York River. They are not far from the old 
Capitol, and the old Raleigh, and the powder-magazine at 
Williamsburg, or from the old redoubts at Yorktown ; and 
the first and last events of the Revolution of '76 have there, 
at these spots, and all around them, their local habitations and 
their names ; every turf is a soldier's sepulchre, and every hall 
was the scene of some sayings or doings of sages and heroes 
who set the first ball of the Revolution in motion. After it 
had bowled over the Atlantic slope, — at Lexington and Boston 
Harbor and Bunker Hill, at Princeton and Trenton and Ger- 
raantown, at Monmouth Court House and Chadd's Ford and 
Stony Point and Ticonderoga, at King's Mountain and Guil- 
ford and Eutaw and Camden and Charleston, at the Great 
Bridge and Hicksford, — it ricocheted back again, and was spent 
at Cornwallis's surrender at Yorktown, within twelve miles 
of where it started, at the powder-magazine in "Williamsburg. 
And that powder-magazine is still standing ; and now, — oh, 
shame to this old city's corporate authorities! — after being used 
as a temple of the living God, it has been sold by the corpora^ 
tion of Williamsburg, and converted by the purchaser into a 
horse-stable, — a monument of the contrast of the present with 
the past. 

This Peninsula was thus the Alpha and Omega of the scenes 
of the American Revolution. It is a land of genial climate, of 
generous soil, of majestic rivers, of fruitful fertility of fields, 



30 SEVEN DECADES OF Ini^ UNION. 

and of forests of richest frondage, — above all distinguished for 
lis men and women. It was settled by a race, or rather stock, 
of families, the like of which will rarely be seen again, — so 
manly, so refined, so intelligent, so spirited, proud, self-reliant, 
independent, strong, so fresh and so free. The family names 
of this Peninsula known to honor and to fame are countless, — 
the Armisteads, Boilings, Byrds, Blairs, Burwells, Amblers, 
Carters, Cloptons, Christians, Carys, Dandridges, Digges, Fon- 
taines, Gregorys, Harrisons, Coles, Inneses, Mallorys, Nichol- 
sons and Nicholases, Randolphs, Pages, Nelsons, Kennons, 
Griffins, Barrons, Sclaters, Shields, Dudleys, Tuckers, Tylers, 
Tabbs, Tazewells, Wallers, Peachys, Saunders, Wythes, Light- 
foots, Semples, Bassetts, and others no less known, from whom 
have sprung names of note in every Southern and Western 
State, as well as in other parts of Virginia. 

Many heads of these families were themselves educated in 
the schools of the old country, and they employed tutors in 
their households, who were scholars of no mean grade, from 
the Universities of Oxford and Glasgow and Dublin. They 
lived neighborly in peace and plenty, " guided by law and 
bound by duty." Owning boundless broad acres, fair and fer- 
tile, without wants which they could not supply by home-made, 
of plain habits, genial in intercourse, and profuse in hospitality, 
every manor was one of gentle graces and of manly bearing. 
The sons and the Di Vernon daughters had their packs of 
hounds and bugles for the horn-music of frosty mornings, and 
duck and plover, bounding deer and wild turkey, partridge and 
woodcock and snipe, rabbit and coon and opossum, were their 
game and sport. 

Every boy had his horse, and lived in the saddle: there were 
riders in those days. Thus minds and bodies of men and 
women were trained to the nerve-tunes of health and strength 
and burly freshness ; and manners and morals were brought up 
in all gentleness and grace to make a glad, social, and glorious 
political state. The times taught them wisdom, and to prac- 
tice vigilance, prudence, endurance, industry, self-denial, and 
patriotic devotion. Masters, tutors, teachers, of the schools of 



THE FIRST DECADE. 31 

Europe, were residing' in every neighborhood throughout all the 
peninsulas of Virginia, and they prepared the knights and 
ladies at home for graduation at the principal schools of Wil- 
liam and Mary and of Mrs. Davenport's in Williamsburg. 
They were all proficients in the Humanities, and trained the 
generation which immediately succeeded the Fathers of the 
Revolution, and which was so distinguished in state papers 
and in the debates on law and politics. 

We once had a conversation with Benjamin Watkins Leigh, 
at Callaghan's, in the mountains. He was speaking of thorough 
teaching. 

" Why, sir," said he, " the people nowadays can't spell and 
can't accentuate. Editors of the newspapers spell 'expense' 
with a ' c ;' and no one nowadays pronounces ' a-c-c-e-p-t-a-b-1-e' 
correctly." 

" Well, Mr. Leigh, how do you pronounce it ?" 

" I pronounce it ac'ceptable, of course," said he. 

" But Johnson and Walker pronounce it either ' ac'ceptable' 
or 'accept'able.' " 

" And who looks to Johnson, or Walker, or any mere lexi- 
cographer," he replied, " for accent or pronunciation ?" 

" We look to good lexicographers for reputable use." 

" And who cares for ' reputable use' when it is against the 
laws of grammar ?" said he. 

" And who taught you the laws of grammar ?" 

" I was taught my lessons of the laws of grammar by 
Needier Robinson, in the parish of Dale, in the county of 
Chesterfield." 

"And who was Needier Robinson ?" 

He looked at his collocutor with surprise which ' expressed 
that he must be himself unknown, never to have heard of 
Needier Robinson. 

"Needier Robinson was a Scotch scholar, the friend of ray 
father, the parson of the parish, and he was my teacher. It 
was the joy of my boyhood to sit at Robinson's knee and listen 
to his conversations with my father and John Randolph's 
mother, who then lived at Mattoax. The world thought her 



32 SEVFJV DECADES OF THE UNION: 

son spake as never man spake, but she could charm a bird out 
of the tree by the music of her tongue ; and Needier Robinson 
taught us all, young and old. He taught me the laws of my 
mother tongue." 

And what Needier Robinson was to Benjamin Watkins 
Leigh in Chesterfield, a Mr. McMurdo, another Scotchman, 
was to John Tyler and his schoolmates in Charles City. Both 
Leigh and Tyler were alumni of William and Mary, and in 
after-life brought hotoe to their Alma Mater their sheaves of 
distinction and honors for her training. 

Those old Scotch schoolmasters were awfully severe, and 
McMurdo's harshness to a certain good-natured Luke Lubin, 
of his pupils, caused a rebellion in the school to mob the master, 
in which the boy John Tyler was a rebel leader. 

This was hardly to be expected from his nature. He was a 
slender child, of silken hair, with a twinkling bright eye, and 
genial smile ; a singular face, with a very prominent, thin 
Roman nose, which gave exaggerated expression to his look 
of comic goodness. 

His face of manhood was not unlike the pictures of Charles 
the First of England, especially that picture of the monarch 
when the mob made him drink a cup of wine. His expression 
was that of playful, soft, bland mildness. He was a delicate 
boy, no pupil of Zeno, and no Centaur; rather effeminate, imag- 
inative, flexile, versatile, and mercurial as a girl ; sincere, frank, 
affectionate, benevolent and generous, gleeful and social, seek- 
ing innocent sports among the young, but preferring and de- 
lighting in a reverential companionship with his seniors in age 
and experience. An eminent trait in his character was rever- 
ence. His- intercourse with the sages around him always struck 
him with awe and inspiration, and thus he was teachable more 
by association with his betters than by much reading of books ; 
but his ambition was healthful, and kept him posted in letters, 
and he had quick perception and great power of appropriating 
what he heard or read. At about the age of thirteen, in the 
year 1803, he was sent by his father to reside with Judge 
James Semple, at Williamsburg, and entered the grammar- 



THE FIRST DECADE. 33 

school of William and Marj. In a year or two he entered the 
college, — perhaps in 1804, though his name does not appear 
in the college-rolls before 1806. He was then in a class with 
John J. Crittenden of Kentucky, William S. Archer, Linn Banks, 
William Crump of Powhatan, John P. May, and others after- 
wards distinguished in life. His room-mate was Judge Briscoe 
G. Baldwin, of Staunton, whom he loved and honored much, 
though their names were enrolled in different years in the 
catalogue. 

He graduated in 1807, at seventeen years of age, showing 
that his progress was rapid and his development precocious. 
He was a pet of BigjE^B^SBJisj^^^Sfei^residing, and always 
spoke of him as Wq fatifter of his inltuoctreta. 

To show how/pe could win men in spite\y)f their prejudices, 
he was in the c^vention of 1861, which^iaised the ordinances 
of secession. Coii5niJ>John B. Bald^^te/ the son of Judge 
Briscoe G. Baldwin/^s a1l/(^)6r? His politics differed widely 
from Mr. Tyler's. Mr. Tyler from his youth up was a Demo- 
crat of the order of Jefferson, whilst Judge Baldwin had edu- 
cated his son in the ultra school of Alexander Hamilton. He 
abided not any school or schoolmen of Democracy ; was op- 
posed to secession ; was for peace, or prevention of war, on 
almost any terms ; made a speech for which he was crowned by 
a Boston woman with flowery wreaths, as the champion of the 
"Dnion in the convention; and uttered sentiments and argu- 
ments which bound him, it was thought, on principle, to unite 
himself with the Northern cause against his native valley land 
of Virginia. He especially opposed Mr. Tyler's views on the 
report of the Commissioners of Virginia respecting the results 
of the Peace Conference at Washington. His Whig prejudices, 
indeed, against Mr. Tyler, for long-past bitterness of his party, 
for reason of his bank vetoes, and other matters of difference, 
kept him aloof from his society. He had avoided personal con- 
tact with him. But at last the ladies of the two houses met 
at the hotel where they messed, and brought them together. 
Mr. Tyler had observed Colonel Baldwin's avoidance of him, 
if not his aversion to him ; and one morning he walked up to 

3 



34 SEVEN DECADES OF TEE UNION. 

him, and drew a paper from his bosom and asked him to read 
it. It was a letter to Mr. Tyler from Colonel Baldwin's father, 
written late in life. It proved that Judge Briscoe G. Baldwin 
knew, loved, and honored John Tyler, and it subdued the son's 
aversion, and made him honor and respect the man of whom 
his honored father was proud to be a friend. 



CHAPTER II. 

THE SECOND DECADE, FROM 1800 TO 1810. 

The Aggressions of England and France upon Neutrals, and the Rejection of 
the American Mission by France — Commencement of the American Navy— 
The ESect of the Alien and Sedition Laws, causing the Kentucky and Vir- 
ginia Resolutions of 1798 — The Presidential Election in 1800, overthrowing 
the Federal Party, and dividing the Democratic by the Contest of Burr for 
the First Place on the Ticket — Peace with the First Consul, and the Acqui- 
sition of Louisiana — Disunion Sentiments in the North in 1803, on account 
of the Treaty with France — The Lewis and Clarke Expedition — The Orders 
in Council, and the Imperial Decrees — The Attack of the Leopard on the 
Chesapeake — The Embargo Act — Preparations for War — The War turned 
over to the Mtidison Term — What Mr. Jefl'erson did for Science. 

The election of Jefferson and Burr in the year 1800 was not 
more a revolution of parties than of principles and measures of 
administration. 

The mission of the United States to France, consisting of 
John Marshall, Elbridge Gerry, and Charles Cotesworth Pinck- 
ney, was repulsed at court with contumely, and withdrew, 
Pinckney declaring the noble sentiment which became a motto 
in the war with France on the ocean, and afterwards in the war 
with England on sea and land, — " Millions for defense ; not a 
cent for tribute." 

The first regular navy was begun by building the two illus- 
trious frigates, in 1198, the "Constitution" and the "United 
States;" and Decatur in the "Delaware," and Truxton in the 
" Constellation," and numerous prizes of our privateers, proved 
that we were more than a match for Frenchmen, and trained 
our seamen somewhat for meeting. the British navy afterwards 
on the high seas. 

Before the twelfth amendment of the Constitution, in 1804, 
the President and Vice-President were voted for indiscriminately 

(35) 



36 SEVEN' DECADES OF THE UNION. 

on the same ticket, and^ Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr re- 
ceiving an equal number of votes on the same ticket in 1800, 
the House of Representatives had to choose by ballot which 
should be President, and which Vice-President, of the United 
States. To determine the choice there were thirty-six ballots. 
The Federalists united with a minority of the Democrats upon 
Burr, and this struggle added much to the acrimony of party 
spirit at the time. Mr. Jefferson was finally chosen, on the Hth 
of February, 1801. ' 

Napoleon Bonaparte, then First Consul of France, seeing how 
Canada and all the French possessions in America had been 
wrested from him by the superior naval and merchant marine of 
Great Britain, and needing money for the schemes of his bound- 
less ambition on the continent of Europe, made peace with the 
United States, and ceded the whole territory of Louisiana to 
them in April, 1803, for the sum of fifteen millions of dollars. 

This was a bold and immense measure of administration for 
so young a nation, and changed at once the whole horoscope 
of its future. It bore immediately, and has ever since contin- 
uously borne, upon the destiny of the United States with more 
incalculable effect than any other stroke of policy ever did, or 
probably ever can. It extended our boundary to the Pacific, 
and gave to us the whole valley of the Mississippi, and the 
jurisdiction of its mouth. It was the first acquisition of terri- 
tory by the Federal Union under the Constitution of 1787, other- 
wise than by cessions of the States. This territory, ceded bj> 
France to Spain in 1764, was on the 1st of October, 1800, by 
the treaty concluded at St. Ildefonso, retroceded to France ; 
and its boundaries had been determined by the treaty of San 
Lorenzo between the United States and Spain, made by Thomas 
Piuckney and the Prince of Peace, on the 27th of October, 1795. 
It was ceded by France to the United States with the same 
extent which it had when in the possession of Spain. 

This first and sudden leap of the United States to so vast an 
empire laid the foundation for a permanent and progressive 
change of policy and of destiny for the infant giant, — yet an 
infant nation, made at once a giant by this immense acquisition 



THE SECOND DECADE. 37 

of territory, inviting an immense immigration, and rousing 
the most rankling sectional jealousies and strifes. 

Here was indeed a cause, commencing with the beginning of 
the first century after the birth of the nation, for a thorough 
revolution and reformation of policy and of political parties and 
principles. The Federalists at once attacked the measure, and 
the northern and non-slaveholding section of the country was 
startled and alarmed by its adoption. 

The struggle at once commenced as to whether the acquired 
territory should be " free soil" or not. The Federalists, the 
most latitudinarian in the construction of the Constitution, — 
those even who advocated the charter of a national bank, and 
justified the enactment of the Alien and Sedition laws, — sud- 
denly became strict constructionists, and assailed the acquisition 
as unconstitutional. 

And New England was suspicious of Mr. Jefferson's motives, 
thinking that his aim was to make the measure kick the beam 
of power in favor of his own slaveholding section. 

The North, having the shipping of the country, and most in- 
tercourse with and transportation to and from Europe, looked 
at once to immigration for the control of the settlements of the 
newly-acquired territory. They ought to have foreseen that it, 
more than any other cause, would increase their preponderance 
in the Union ; but they feared its effect upon their relative po- 
litical strength, and blindly, without cause, manifested a strong 
disposition and made some concealed movements for a dissolu- 
tion of the Union and a separation from the Southern States. 
This, long afterwards, was exposed by Mr. John Q. Adams. 
and is now being more fully revealed by sundry publications 
and books of biography reviewed lately by Professor Bledsoe, 
of the Baltimore Southern Review. 

This suspicion of Mr. Jefferson and jealousy of the South 
were bo^h unfounded. In the first place, they forgot that he 
was among the first emancipationists of the country ; that when 
Virginia ceded her Northwest Territory to the Union, he incor- 
porated in the deed of cession the inviolable condition that in- 
voluntary slavery, except for crime, should not be permitted in 



38 SEVEN DECADES OF TEE UNION. 

the ceded territory. And in the second place, they ought to 
have known that all the settlers from immigration, or from 
their own hive of white and free population, would have more 
political influence than any number of slaves carried to the 
new lands could possibly have. 

Mr. Jefferson was fully justified in the measure, as national 
necessities have since developed. There is nothing in the Con- 
stitution which forbids the act, and everything in the impor- 
tance of the territory to demand the acquisition. jS'ew States 
might be admitted into the Union, and it was absurd to deny 
that the United States might acquire territory by arms or by 
purchase, as well as any other external sovereignty on earth. 
France would never have sold it but for the fear that it would 
be conquered by Great Britain, as Canada had been, by a supe- 
rior naval force and power of transporting troops across the 
ocean ; and the apprehensions of France might well be those of 
the United States in a greater degree. A European power 
already held it in perfect obstruction to the march of empire 
westward, and another was seeking to snatch it from a weaker 
power who could not hold it, and Louisiana added to Canada 
would have placed a cincture by land and sea around the 
boundaries of the United States, which would, in the naval 
grasp of Great Britain, have been a constrictor about our very 
life as a nation. We could not have existed, much less have 
expanded, in such boundaries. The separate States could not 
acquire the territory, and, if the United States could not, the 
progress of popular liberty would have been .constrained and 
stopped, if not destroyed, within our infant dominions. 

The very water-shed of the continent argued the necessity of 
the case, and flowed to the conclusion of the legitimacy as well 
as the expediency of the purchase. Every river on the conti- 
nent, except the New River, the Monongahela, and the Shenan- 
doah, — all three in Virginia, — flows from north to south. The 
Mississippi, commencing near the Lake of the Woods and 
emptying into the Gulf of Mexico, is the great artery of the 
continent. In the hands of Great Britain, sovereign of 
Canada, it would have been to that power, in case of war, what 



THE SECOND DECADE. 39 

it was to the Northern States in the late war with t^ie Confed- 
eracy, an anaconda, and the United States would have been 
what the Confederacy was, a Laocoon 1 

Mr. Jeiferson would have proved himself to be without fore- 
sight or patriotism not to have made the purchase. The tide 
of immigration was setting in, and every inch of fertile soil was 
needed to the Pacific and to the limits of the territory of the 
Hudson Bay Company to form the requisite asylum for the 
oppressed of the Old World escaping to the New. There was 
no limit to the treaty-making power, but the discussion arose 
upon the question of the power of the House of Representatives 
to make the appropriation. And there was a problem in this 
which the war of 1812 was necessary to solve. 

Party spirit never raged more rabid than during the presi- 
dential terms of the elder Adams and of Mr. Jefferson. The 
feuds became more complicated during the latter term, owing 
to the course of Aaron Burr in the election of Mr. Jefferson. 
Whilst Yice-President during Mr. Jefferson's first term, he was 
a candidate for the chief magistracy of the State of New York, 
and was defeated by the partisans of Mr. Hamilton, though 
they had done their utmost to elect him in the House of Repre- 
sentatives to the Presidency of the United States over Mr. 
Jefferson, against the true intent and meaning of the people 
at the polls. He was good enough for the Presidency whilst 
used as a treacherous tool with which to defeat Democracy, 
but then he was thrown aside by the Federalists and denounced 
as unworthy of trust in the office of governor of a State. 

The history of Mr. Burr is still involved in great mystery, 
and will never now be fully cleared of all cloud of doubt. He 
was an eminently able and bad man, brave beyond all question, 
but ambitious in the extreme, and unscrupulous in the means 
by which he aimed to climb the ladder of preferment. Yet he 
had some high qualities, and, doubtless, in some material re- 
spects was woefully wronged. Hamilton was incomparably 
his superior in character and intellect ; but we are not convinced 
that Mr. Hamilton was not the wrong-doer to Burr, and to him- 
self too, in the affair of their fatal and lamentable duel. 



40 SEVEN DECADES OF THE UNION. 

There were two very remarkable traits in Mr. Burr : first, he 
was never known to vituperate any rival or opponent in public, 
either by word spoken or written ; and second, he made it a 
rule never to resort to the public prints to defend his reputa- 
tion against any assault, whether true or false. It was not so 
with General Hamilton. He despised Burr, and openly de- 
nounced him as a Catiline. Burr actually declined to take 
any notice of the assault. The assault was not slight, as 
according to the general belief, but severe, pointed, and personal. 
Burr's friends demanded that he should notice it, coming, as it 
did, from authority so high as that of Hamilton. He then 
acquiesced in his friends' demand so far only as to call for 
explanations. He received from Mr. Hamilton the explanation 
that the name of Catiline was applied to him in no other but a 
political sense, describing the consequences and not the motives 
or intentions of his (Burr's) political opinions, and not imputing 
to him any personal, bad, vicious, or unpatriotic motives. This 
explanation Burr readily accepted as satisfactory, and Mr. 
Hamilton voluntarily pledged abstinence from all allusion to 
Mr. Burr again in any offensive and public way. 

In a very short time afterwards, Mr. Hamilton alluded to 
him again in the same manner, and called him the same offen- 
sive name. 

Mr. Burr's friends then demanded that he should challenge 
him. He did so; Hamilton accepted without offering other 
explanation, and, seemingly conscious of wrong, reserved his 
fire, exposed his own life, and would not endanger Burr's. 

Of his intention not to aim at Burr's life, the latter was, of 
course, not informed, and Burr being the challenger, it was 
necessarily known that he would fire at Mr. Hamilton. By 
the laws of honor constraining gentlemen at that day, he was 
bound to challenge Hamilton, and was to be expected to shoot 
his adversary if he could, and was not bound to wait, in de- 
livering his fire, until he could see whether his adversary was 
going to shoot at him or not. He had not time, and the risk 
was too great. 

They both had been distinguished officers in the army, were 



THE SECOND DECADE. 41 

governed by its then code of responsibility to figlit, and neither, 
it was thought, meant any child's play when they did resort to 
arms and fought. 

On Burr's trial, no overt act of treason was proved, and it 
is far from being established that he had any intention of 
treason to the United States. It was fully declared, in his last 
moments, that his design was to enter Mexico with a consider- 
able force of volunteers, and to establish a splendid empire 
there. And can any friend of civilization say that he would 
have done harm to humanity? 

Certain it is that Mr. Jefferson was his avowed and active 
enemy, and all the power of the executive of the United States 
was brought to aid in the attempt to criminate him. He bore 
his trial with great coolness and fortitude, and was his own 
best counsel, though he had a John Wickhara to defend him. 
He was never a desperate man ; but calm, clear-headed, indif- 
ferent to all the decrees of fate. He was false to woman 
and to the Democratic party, wholly unscrupulous in his means 
and Lucifer-like in his designs, regardless of the judgment of 
mankind, and defiant of public opinion, put himself on a venture 
without a conscientious compunction, and was a horrible in- 
fidel ; but the killing of Alexander Hamilton was according to 
the code of human honor in his day; and the worst that can be 
said of him is, that it was the least of his offenses against the 
laws of God. 

He was not run a second time for the Presidency ; Clinton's 
was substituted for his name, and Burr was no longer an actor 
in American affairs. 

The TeiTitory of Louisiana, beyond the Mississippi and to the 
Pacific, was explored by the expedition of Lewis and Clarke, 
in the year 1804, and the way was thus pioneered for emigrants. 

And this brings us to another historic event of this decade, 
from 1800 to 1810, which met John Tyler at home, just as 
William and Mary gave him his diploma to begin active life, 
in his seventeenth or eighteenth year of age, — the daring out- 
rage of the British frigate the Leopard, which pounced upon 
an American frigate, the Chesapeake, at the Capes of Yir- 



42 SEVEN DECADES OF THE UNION. 

ginia, when unprepared for action. This condition of the 
Chesapeake was undoubtedly designed by the administration, 
even at the sacrifice of as noble, brave, and competent a cap- 
tain as ever was " monarch of the peopled deck" of a man-of- 
war. Mr. Jefferson's policy was to rouse the nation to a 
declaration of war, and James Barron of Hampton, as gallant 
a son of as gallant a sire, and brother of as brave a brother, as 
ever honored Virginia by his birthright, was cruelly and treach- 
erously made the victim of that Moloch policy. 

The frigate Chesapeake was at anchor in the harbor of Nor- 
folk, undergoing repairs, and her officers fitting her for sea; 
storekeepers, ship - carpenters, riggers, ordnance officers, and 
shore commanders were at work on her, and superintending 
her preparations. Her crew was just enlisted, unorganized, 
strangers, undrilled, and consisted largely of foreigners. Know- 
ing this, and bent on asserting the right of search for British 
seamen, under the despotic maxim of Great Britain, " once a 
citizen always a citizen," the Leopard was lying off and on, 
just outside the Capes of Virginia, awaiting the sailing of the 
Chesapeake, to board her, insult her flag, and seize such of her 
crew as might be claimed as British subjects. The Leopard's 
commander had insolently warned the Chesapeake that such 
was her domineering threat. 

This was notorious to all Norfolk, and was communicated 
officially by Captain Barron to the Navy Department ; but he 
was not allowed to prepare the ship he was to command. Her 
crew and munitions and stores were hurried on board, and with 
cordage and spars lumbering her deck, and guns not mounted, 
and useless for action, he Avas ordered to take command and 
put out to sea immediately, in the then condition of the ship. 
She had not cleared the marine league before the Leopard 
made good her threat, bore down upon her, demanded the 
delivery of a part of her crew, and the right of search. All 
that Barron could do was to refuse the demand, take the de- 
structive broadside of the Leopard, return her shot, and sur- 
render the Chesapeake as a prize of war. That was what the 
administration wished him to do, to rouse the national indigna- 



THE SECOND DECADE. 43 

tion ; but they had not sq ordered or informed him, and im- 
mediately tried him for cowardice and neglect of duty, and 
suspended him from command. He was banished to Europe 
by his poverty, and this brought on the duel with Decatur, 
instigated by others whom Barron could never insult enough 
afterwards to make them fight. It was a sad thing that the 
gallant Decatur should have fallen in a combat which he was 
made to seek with the friend of his father, who led him, a dissi- 
pated youth of Philadelphia, to the quarter-deck of Barron's 
sloip, and committed him to his care and training. Barron had 
treated him like a father, and taught him all he knew of sea- 
manship ; and yet he was set up by the enemies of both to 
champion their diabolical design, to put out of the way of their 
promotion the senior officer of the navy. 

Never, until Barron and Decatur were lying side by side on 
the gory sod of Bladensburg, did each, shot by the other, know 
the wanton wickedness of the fomenters of their duel. It was 
not until Decatur asked, "Now, Barron, tell me why you did not 
come home during the war," and Barron replied, "Ah, Decatur, 
why did you not ask me that before ?" and told him the reason, 
that he knew how he had wronged his father's friend, and hig 
own patron and benefactor. Then he heaved a broken sigh, 
dropped a tear, grasped Barron's hand, and bade him farewell, 
— " God bless you" — for all of this life. 

This episode is due to friends of old Elizabeth City, to that 
game-cock town of Hampton, which was never known to breed 
a coward, and to James Barron, who was ever the friend of 
John Tyler. 

Great Britain and France were struggling for the destruction 
of each other, and for the mastery of the world, and both had 
grossly violated the neutral rights of the United States in 
almost every form of irritating insult and injury. The despotic 
maxim of " Once a citizen, always a citizen," fixing allegiance 
forever to the sovereignty of the place of birth, and the doc- 
trine of " the right of search," dominating all the high seas, 
asserting that a British-born sulyect, though he had left his 
birthright, had quitted the limits of his parent country, had 



44 SEVEN DECADES OF THE UNION. 

renounced his allegiance and quit claim to British protection, 
and had been domiciled and naturalized in another land ; 
though he had taken the wings of the morning and flown to 
the uttermost parts of the earth, yet but drew a lengthening 
chain, and might be seized wherever found, and be impressed 
into the British service ; and the " right to hail and heave to" a 
friendly or neutral flag and search all ships on the high seas, to 
find British subjects, drove the United States to the necessity 
of asserting the rights of neutrality, that free ships made free 
goods, and the rights of expatriation and of naturalization. 

The United States first asserted to the world the true policy 
of peace, and that true allegiance was not a bondage ; that the 
subjects of any sovereign might elect the place of their alle- 
giance outside of the limits of the nation of their birth ; that the 
high seas were free to the trade of every lawful power, and 
that every neutral flag was sacred, and intact from search. 

After searching our merchant vessels, and filling the Dart- 
mouth dungeons with sailors seized on board of our ships on 
the high seas. Great Britain sent her man-of-war the Leopard 
to the very pillars of Hercules at the Capes of Virginia, and 
at the front door of our Atlantic coast slapped the sovereignty 
of the United States in the face by capturing the frigate Chesa- 
peake, in a helpless state, unprepared for action, and taking from 
her such of her crew as were arbitrarily claimed to be British- 
born subjects. 

It was in vain that the United States urged their independ- 
ence, and that all their population born before 1781 were British- 
born subjects, and might, under the same pretext, be searched 
for and seized, and impressed to fight against their own coun- 
try, to the destruction of the freedom of our flag. This very 
argument was irritating to the national pride of Great Britain, 
and aggravated her soreness at our independence, and her jeal- 
ousy of our rnpidly-growing merchant and naval marine. The 
action of the State of Virginia against this insolent aggression 
was grand and glorious. The legislature passed a resolution 
couched in these burning words : 

"At a moment when the rights of our country have been 



THE SECOND DECADE. 45 

assailed by the eiicroachmeuts of foreign nations, whose con- 
duct towards the United States has been reguhited by no law 
of nations nor by any principle of justice ; at a moment when 
our commerce is menaced by the iniquitous edicts of Great 
Britain and France, our flag insulted, the great highway of 
nations, which Nature and Nature's God have allotted for the 
use of all countries, has been actually turnpiked by the tolls 
and tribute of the British government for the benefit of the 
British exchequer; at a moment when it becomes every Ameri- 
can to rally around the measures of his government, to vindi- 
cate the undoubted rights of his beloved country, and to declare 
for his country or against his country ; 

"Besolved, That a committee be appointed to prepare an 
address to the Congress and President of the United States, 
pledging every nerve and every exertion of this legislature to 
support the rights of the United States, to endure every priva- 
tion and pain, and to perish upon the ruins of our country 
rather than abandon its rights, its honor, and its independence." 

The committee appointed were Pope, Semple, Baker, Robert- 
son of Amelia, W. Brokeuborough, Preston, E. Watts, Wirt, 
Archer, Murdaugh, Graham, Peyton, and Strother. 

President Tyler's father accepted the governorship of Vir- 
ginia on the 11th of December, and this resolution was passed 
by the legislature on Deceu)ber 13, 1808. Soon after this the 
committee made their report on the affair of the Leopard and 
the Chesapeake, and their reported resolutions were adopted 
unanimously: 

" That it is better for us to cease to exist^s a nation than to 
exist under dishonor and violated rights. 

" That the aggressions of Great Britain and France have in- 
fringed our honor ; have violated our rights ; have usurped 
upon our sovereignty as an independent nation. 

" That we will stand by the government of our country, and 
that we will support them with the last cent of our treasure and 
the last drop of our blood, in every measure, either of defense 
or offense, which they may deem expedient to vindicate our in- 
jured honor and our violated rights." 



46 SEVEN DECADES OF THE UNION. 

These were finally adopted January 6, 1809 ; and let those 
of the present times who deny that national honor involves per- 
sonal honor, and those who affect to deem him a mad martyr 
who devotes himself and all that he is and all that he has to 
patriotic sacrifice, read these resolutions, and drink in an inspi- 
ration which will elevate them to a nobler nature above the 
sordid selfishness which would price public honor and liberty 
by the calculations- of a false and fatal expediency, and learn 
that where honor and freedom are seriously assailed, noble men 
and patriots count not the costs of contest. 

The measure chiefly resorted to by Mr. Jefferson was the 
Non-Importation act; he ordered British war-vessels from our 
harbors, and Congress passed an embargo act forbidding the 
departure of vessels from American harbors. But these meas- 
ures were worse than futile, for they only inflamed the com- 
mercial sections of the country, and formed a pretext for the 
treasonable resistance which culminated in the Hartford Con- 
vention. 

The purchase of Louisiana, the admission of Ohio into the 
Union, the increase of the population to seven millions, and the 
flood of immigration, showed that the country was multiplying 
and magnifying into large proportions; and when, in 1807, 
Fulton applied steam to n >vigation, that mighty motor gave 
the first physical impulse to causes which have magnified and 
multiplied the United States into mammoth dimensions. 

The mechanic began his great work of conquering time and 
space for settlement of virgin lands by one of the most irresist- 
ible powers of nature, and the age began to be "a fast age," 
running by the old mile-stones of the past too speedily to read 
the way-marks and figures inscribed on tin m, from causes grow- 
ing out of the wars of Napoleon. Up to 1810 he had turned 
Europe topsy-turvy, not so much by arms as by the arts and 
physical sciences of the Polytechnics, which his armies and con- 
quests demanded and developed. Chemistry, natural philosophy, 
mechanics, applied science, mathematics, and civil engineering 
advanced rapidly and rose highest in the studies of men ; and 



THE SECOND DECADE. 41 

tliey were all called for in turn by the new continent inviting 
the Old World to its rivers and forests, and craving for its 
crooked ways to be made straight and its rough places to be 
made smooth. Mountains had to be leveled, and valleys to be 
raised. 

The wars of Europe, caused by Napoleon, from 1800 to 1815, 
had an immense influence upon immigration and settlement in 
the TJnited States. And Mr. Jefferson, too, was a philosopher 
and a man of science. Not only was he the chief builder of 
the University of Yirginia, but he ought to have had it also 
inscribed upon his tomb that he brought Hassler to the United 
States to lay the base-line of our surveys and triangulations. 
Hassler was a master of science, and should not be forgotten in 
our history. 

Mr. Jefferson brought him to this country, and he repaid him 
by his weights and measures and his coast survey. He was a 
wonderful study in himself. An old man when we first knew 
him, with a head which phrenology would have instanced as a 
marked one and a sculptor would have chiseled as a model ; 
an aquiline nose, thin and intellectual, and lips and chin which 
gave an expression of sweet manliness ; a form erect and en- 
ergetic ; of an extreme nervousness, which made him unique 
and often grotesque ; with a deep-set eye, sparkling, bright, 
and penetrating by a glance, — his appearance was attractively 
" game ;" and it did not falsify his heart ; he was afraid of 
nothing ; no intellectual puzzle, no physical obstruction or ob- 
stacle, no fear of man, could make him hesitate in his pursuit 
and following straight after the truth. 

We can never forget a scene between him and Mr. AVood- 
bury, Secretary of the Treasury during Mr. Yan Buren's 
administration. Whilst the most corrupt extravagance was 
indulged in for the patronage of partisans, the administration 
was urgent in recommendations of economy and of reduction 
of appropriations to the most important branches of the public 
service. The lighthouses, for example, it was proposed should 
be reduced in expenditure. This was met by the exclamation 
of th^e Opposition, in the House of Representatives, in behalf 



48 SEVEN DECADES OF THE UNION. 

of the storm-distressed mariner, that it would be " putting out 
the eyes of the ocean !" And the Coast Survey it was pro- 
posed should be reduced. The salary of Mr. Hassler was eight 
thousand dollars, and that of his son three thousand dollars, 
per annum, and this was thought too much. The old gentle- 
man kept, at the expense of government, a singular sort of 
" Shandradan" vehicle, curiously slung on springs in a way 
not allowing of the least jar. This was though to be un- 
necessary, and not in keeping with allowances to other branches 
of service of higher grade. Mr. Woodbury sent for him to 
show cause why he should be allowed to keep his coach and 
pair at public expense. He replied, with eagerness, " Oh, it is 
necessary for my babies.''^ 

" Your BABIES, Mr. Hassler ? — I did not know that you had 
any at your time of life !" 

" Yes ; as I get older they increase rapidly and become more 
and more tender and delicate, and require a carriage." 

" But, Mr. Hassler, if that be so, the government must not 
pay for riding out your babies." 

"Ah, it must not, say you, when they are the government's 
babies too ?" 

For the first time the secretary began to see that Hassler 
was speaking of his fine instruments, his theodolites, etc., used 
on the Coast Survey. 

" Your instruments, you mean. But you need not ride them 
out here ; and when you go to the field of your work you can 
transport them by the railroad-cars better than in a carriage." 

" No ! no ! That jarring concussion makes them nervous, 
puts them out of order, and unfits them for exact use. They 
shall not be vexed by the railroad-cars !" 

" Well, then, your salary, Mr. Hassler, and that of your son, 
— you and he in one family receive eleven thousand dollars, 
whilst I, the Secretary of the Treasury, get but six thousand 
dollars for superintending the whole department !" 

" Well, tam it, tat is right ! A President of de United States 
can make a Secretary of de Treasury, but it took an Almighty 
God to make a Hassler !" 



THE SECOND DECADE. 49 

He was left undisturbed. 

Some ignorant persons in New Jersey once had him im- 
prisoned for trespassing on the lands, by cutting trees, etc., in 
the way of his triangulations, and he would make no conces- 
sions to the prosecution. The government had to relieve him. 
At one time an eflbrt was made in the House of Represen- 
tatives to curtail and change his elementary plan of survey, 
as too tedious and expensive. The substitute proposed was 
what is called the chronometric plan. It was our pleasure 
to be on the committee, and, siding with the old hero of science, 
to enjoy his collisions with some of the members who advo- 
cated the substitute. One and another annoyed him by repe- 
tition of the questions, " What was his system ? When would 
it be completed? When would expenditures cease? Would 
it ever be completed ?" 

This would be answered by reference to his correspondence 
with Mr. Jefferson, by exposing what absurd expenditures 
were made when the work at one time was turned over to the 
Navy Department, by illustrating the necessity of a base-line 
and actual triangulation, and by referring to all his reports 
and manuscripts. He was told in reply that his explanations 
were unsatisfactory, and a brief expose of the distinctive dif- 
ference between his plan and the chronometric was required. 
Then he would turn again to two large baskets full of papers, 
showing his plan in general and in detail. Worried again and 
again by these examinations, at last he exclaimed, indignantly, 
" I am not paid to teach members of Congress mathematics ! — tat 
is an impossible task ! And this committee would sit too long 
if it sits so long as it would take to complete tat task." 

He was asked no more such questions, and the Coast Survey 
on Hassler's base was happily continued. 

Not only the acquisition of territory, the immigration from 
Europe to settle it, Napoleon's wars and science, the genius of 
Hassler, and the application of steam, but our own preparations 
for war with either England or France or with both, gave great 
prominence and progress to the " physical and material" in the 
United States. 

4 



50 SEVEN DECADES OF THE UNION. 

The war was not allowed to break out during Mr. Jefferson's 
administration. Pretexts for it were afforded, and preparations 
for it were made, but its declaration was withheld, and hostilities 
were actually restrained. • 

At the time of these events, John Tyler, Jr., had just been 
graduated, in the eighteenth year of his age, at William and 
Mary, in the year 1807. His seventeenth birthday was on the 
29th day of March, 1807, and he took his degrees, it is said, 
in that year, the commencement occurring after his birthday. 
He commenced study of the law at once, first in the office of 
his father, aud afterwards with the illustrious Edmund Ran- 
dolph, the Attorney-General of the Washington administration, 
the chief draughtsman of the Constitution of the United States, 
and one of the ablest lawyers and statesmen of the convention 
which formed it, Hamilton, Madison, and Pinckney not excepted, 
and the cabinet officer whose correspondence with Governor 
Mifflin, of Pennsylvania, in '94, coupled with Hamilton's instruc- 
tions to General Harry Lee, forms the true code of constitu- 
tional law governing cases of insurrection and rebellion. He 
obtained his license to practice his profession in the twentieth 
year of his age, having obtained a certificate without inquiry as 
to his age, and was at once engaged in a large and lucrative 
practice. 

Mr. Jefferson's administration was to terminate in March, 
1809, and on the 6th of February of that year the Legislature 
of Virgiuia passed their valedictory address to him, gratefully 
acknowledging the purity of his republican administration, 
thanking him for internal taxes abolished, for superfluous officers 
disbanded, for renouncing the monarchic maxim that "a national 
debt is a national blessing," for' extinguishing the right of the 
Indians to one hundred millions of national domain, for the 
acquisition of Louisiana without guilt or calamity of conquest, 
for the preservation of peace amidst great and pressing difficul- 
ties, for cultivating and securing the good will of the aborigines 
and extending civilization to them, for the lesson taught to the 
Barbary powers, and for the preservation of the liberty of speech 



THE SECOND DECADE. . 51 

and of the press inviolate, without which genius and science 
are given to man in vain. 

We cite this notation of the virtues and benefits of Mr. Jef- 
ferson's administration in order to compare what he did with 
what may proudly be claimed for Mr. Tyler's administration 
afterwards. 



CHAPTER III. 

THE- THIRD DECADE, FROM ISIO TO 1830. 

Tecumseh and Tippecanoe — War with Great Britain ; how the declaration of it 
was got at, and Mr. Tyler's part in the War — The Attempt upon Canada — 
General Scott, another War-made Man — The Navy on the Ocean and the 
Lakes — Blue-Lights — Cockburn at Hampton ; General Taylor, another War- 
made Man — General Jackson — The Course of Connecticut and Massachu- 
setts during the War — The Hartford Convention called by Massachusetts in 
the midst of the War — Peace saved the United States — After Peace, Im- 
posts for Protection — National Bank in 1S17 — The Colonization Society and 
the Republic of Liberia — The First Terra of Mr. Monroe — His Conciliation 
of Federalism — His Cabinet — J. Q. Adams — W. H. Crawford — John C. Cal- 
houn — Internal Improvements — The Erie Canal by New York — The Seminole 
War — St. Mark's — Pensacola and Fort Barrancas — Cession of Florida — Ad- 
mission of Missouri — Ocean Steam Navigation, July 20, 1819. 

Mr. Jefferson had the sagacity or the timidity, the prudence 
or the selfishness, to turn the responsibility and the burden of 
the war with Great Britain over to his successor, Mr. Madison, 
whom General Jackson pronounced to be a President " not fit 
for blood and carnage." 

So it was that nearly five years elapsed from the time of the 
outrage by the Leopard on the Chesapeake, in 1807, before the 
Democracy ventured to make the declaration of war. Mr. 
Madison paused and parleyed for over ihree years, and it was 
not without the most strenuous opposition that tl e war was 
declared at last. Mr. Tyler often jocularly said that the ques- 
tion was got at rather by "spittoons^' than by ''national spirit,''^ 
and told an anecdote showing the spirit of the times in the 
Congress of the United States. 

Party spirit ran rankling to the most violent extremes. Not 
only was personal courtesy forgolten in partisan rudeness, but 
measures were carried o Uelt ated by means ^^ fas aut nefas.''^ 
(52) 



THE THIRD DECADE. 53 

On the question of "war or no war," the House of Representa- 
tives was kept in session several weeks, day and night, without 
recess or resi)ite. 

So determined was the Opposition that the Federal leaders, 
with an organized phalanx of debaters, got the floor, and held it 
by preconcerted signals, until the patience of their opponents was 
exhausted. The physical endurance of the Speaker was over- 
come ; his sleep was not that of " tired Nature's-swcet restorer," 
— it was not " balmy." An elderly gentleman from New Eng- 
land, with rather goggle-eyes, took the text of peace, and spun it 
out exceeding fine and broadly disquisitive, from point to point, 
each of infinite detail, like Captain Dalgetty's pious tormentor, 
far beyond " eighteenthly," and never towards " lastly," until 
Bellona, or some one else, resorted to most startling means of 
storming the tenure of the floor to get at the " previous ques- 
tion." The Speaker of the House and most of the members, 
making a bare quorum, were asleep, and there was nothing to 
disturb the solemn silence but the Dominie-like drawling of the 
member on the floor, — didactic, monotonous, and slow; the 
clerk's head bent low down upon the journal ; when lo ! sudden 
noises, rattling, dashing, bounding down the aisles, awoke and 
astonished Speaker's chair and clerk's desk ; spittoons were 
bounding and leaping in the air, and, falling, reverberating their 
sounds like thunders among the crags of the Alps. " Order ! 
order ! order!" was the vociferated cry ; but, in the midst of the 
slap-banging confusion of the no longer drowsy night, the hum- 
drum debater who had the floor took his seat from fright, and a 
belligerent Democrat snatched the pause to move the "previous 
question," which was seconded, and the declaration of war 
against Great Britain was thus got at, and carried in the House 
of Representatives of the Congress of the United States in 
June, 1812. 

Another of his stories about the times of this Congress, was 
an odd scene between the gallant Governor Wright, of Mary- 
land, and Mr. Timothy Pickering. Mr. Randolph — John of 
Roanoke — had been riding out, and came to the door of the 
House, whip in hand, where he slopped and stood with a group 



54 SEVEN DECADES OF THE UNION. 

around him, listening to his wizard words, when Governor 
Wright came passing in with a pile of books under each arm, as 
many as he could carry, and preventing him from using either 
hand for salutation. 

" What does this mean, Governor Wright ?" said Mr. Ran- 
dolph. 

"It means — for Timothy Pickering," replied Governor 
Wright, — "I will convict him of treason !" 

Governor Wright was one of the warmest for the war, and 
Mr. Pickering was accused of being what was called a " Blue- 
Light Federalist," — taking the Anglican side of the question. 

" But, sir," said Mr. Randolph, "you do not mean to attack 
Mr. Pickering without a notice of your design ?" 

" Do you think etiquette demands that of me ?" asked the 
governor, for he was the soul of chivalry and honoi". And Mr. 
Randolph, who opposed the war with Great Britain, said, — 

" I thought you were always for a declaration of war before 
beginning hostilities." 

"Well, then," said the governor, "he shall have the notice 
at once." And, stalking down the aisle with his full armament 
of books under each arm, he went to the seat of Mr. Pickering, 
who was a gentleman of dignified mien and elegant appearance. 
Being unable to reach out a hand, the governor " nudged" him 
with his elbow. 

" Look here," said he ; " do you see that ?" (pointing with the 
digit of the right hand to the books under the left arm.) 

Mr. Pickering said, "Yes, sir." 

Then, pointing with the digit of the left hand to the books 
under the right arm, he repeated, — 

" Do you see that ?" 

Mr. Pickering, still wondering what was meant, again said, — 

"Yes, sir." 

And the governor notified him : " With these I mean to give 
J" 



you 

Such was the spirit of party, and such were the manners of 
men, in those times of trial in the second war of the United 
States for independence. 



THE THIRD DECADE. 55 

The wrath against British outrages had been pent up for ten 
years, and it was bursting out at last, and the flame could not 
be repressed. The very moderation and delay of Mr. Jefferson 
and Mr. Madison had intensified the heat, and the war was 
absolutely necessary to the vitality of the Uuited States as a 
nation. Without it the national character would have been de- 
based. The country would have returned to a state of pupilage 
worse than the colonial. Its destinies would have been igno- 
miniously subordinated to the caprices of Great Britain, without 
the care or the interest of a mother country to protect her colonial 
proteges. It was not waged promptly enough, with too little 
preparation, after the hesitation which rather craveuly dela^^ed 
its declaration. But, once begun, it was fought gloriously, against 
immense odds ; and its results were most beneflcial to the United 
States, and to all the secondary and lesser powers of the globe. 

1st. It established our navy and laid tbe keels of our mer- 
chant marine on a basis to enfranchise the highway of the 
ocean and to defend and guard for all future time the freedom 
of the seas. 

2d. It made eventually a new code of neutrality. It estab- 
lished the rule of " Free ships, free goods," and lessened the 
little less than piratical barbarities of " search" and "impress- 
ment." 

3d. It created anew a national spirit of independence, mani- 
fested by the motto of "Millions for defense, and not a cent for 
tribute." 

4 th. It forever annihilated the detestable maxim of tyranny, — 
" Once a citizen, always a citizen." It maintained the cause of 
freedom "once begun," without which the Revolution of 1776 
would have been in vain, — the principle that all governments 
are intended, in the very nature of the only legitimate purpose of 
political power, for the good of the governed ; and that when, 
ever abuses of government become intolerable, the people gov- 
erned may emigrate and renounce allegiance to tyrants; or 
the people or provinces governed may throw off the yoke of 
oppression within their own limits. It went further than the 
Revolution of '76, which asserted this right for colonies alone : 



56 SEVEN DECADES OF THE UNION. 

it asserted that the individual citizen might at will migrate, 
renounce allegiance, and choose another sovereignly and be 
naturalized, as if born its liege subject, and maintained the 
right of States to judge of remedies. By its other motto of 
" Free trade and sailors' rights" it meant nothing else than 
fealty to the freedom of the high seas, and that the poor British 
sailor, escaped from a press-gang, might be made a new citizen 
<if a new sovereignty, and be naturalized, or born again from 
bondage, by a new birth of liberty, and might enlist to fight 
even the flag under which he was pressed and oppressed. The 
United States hailed all peoples with the grand hail of freedom, 
and called to them, saying, " Ho, every one that thirsteth for 
liberty, come unto us, and we will make you free !" They 
offered bounties of land, the richest of earth, to all subjects of 
all nations to renounce their native allegiance and assume a new 
and voluntary allegiance, which, in turn, might at will be re- 
nounced. It triumphantly asserted the individual right of man 
to choose his own sovereign. It set the down-trodden masses 
of the Old World free to leave " the land of memory" and come 
to " the land of hope." 

5th. It gave a Christian chapter to the code of international 
law. 

The second year after Mr. Tyler qualified in his profession, 
just twenty-one years of age the preceding spring, in Decem- 
ber, 1811, he took his seat as a mendjer of the House of 
Delegates of the General Assembly of the State of Yirginia. 
Inheriting a hatred of British tyranny, he was filled with the 
" gaudia" of this contest, and urged and sui)ported every meas- 
ure of the administration to rouse the national spirit, to provide 
for the contingency of the war, and to maintain its declaration. 
He himself raised a company to help fight its battles. At the 
very first session of his service, his sagacity, eloquence, and 
winning address gave him a very high stand as a leader of the 
legislature for five successive years ; and in the session of 1811- 
12 he played a most important part, which ever since has borne 
testimony to his integrity and consistenc}' in two most essen- 
tial particulars of his public life. The legislature had instructed 



THE THIRD DECADE. 57 

the senators of the State in Conj^ress, Messrs. Giles and Brent, 
to vote against the charter of a United States Bank. The sena- 
tors refused to obey the instructions of the legislature. Mr. 
Tyler moved a resolution of censure in the House, claiming the 
power and right of the legislature, as representing the con 
siituency of senators in Congress, to instruct them, and asserting 
it to be the duty of senators to obey the instructions. He took 
two positions then from which he never departed afterwards: 

1st. The unconstitutionality of a national bank. 

2d. The right of a legislature to instruct their senators in 
Congress, and the duty of senators to obey the instructions of 
the legislature of their State. 

The vicissitudes and changes of all life are strange and 
strangely contrasted ; but none are so strange and so much in 
contrast as those of political life. 

In 1811 the attempt was made to charter a Bank of the 
United States by Congress. Mr. Clay voted against the 
power as unconstitutional. 

In 1812 Mr. Benjamin Watkins Leigh drew the resolutions 
of instructions to the senators of Virginia in Congress, requir- 
ing their obedience to them, to vote against the charter of the 
Bank of the United States, and Mr. Tyler introduced the reso- 
lution in 1812 to censure Messrs. Giles and Brent for their 
disobedience to Mr. Leigh's instructions. 

Afterwards, in 1816, Mr. Clay voted for the charter of a 
Bank of the United States, notwithstanding his vote on the 
same subject for the opposite reasons in 1811 ; and in 1836 Mr. 
Leigh violated his own resolution of 1812 in respect to instruc- 
tions, and refused to obey the instructions of the legislature to 
expunge a part of the journal of the Senate. 

The one, Mr. Clay, contradicted himself within four years, 
in respect to ihe bank ; and the other, Mr. Leigh, contradicted 
himself in respect to the right of instructing senators in Con- 
gress, in twenty-four years; whilst Mr. Tyler remained firm 
and uniform in his course upon both questions for a lifetime ; 
and yet, afterwards, no two men of either party were so zeal- 
ous, and strenuous, and bitter, in 1836 and in 1841, in de- 



58 SEVEN DECADES OF THE UNION. 

nouncing Mr. Tyler for inconsistency on the very questions of 
instructions, of obedience to instructions, and of chartering a 
Bank of the United States, as were Henry Clay, of Kentucky, 
and Benjamin Watkins Leigh, of Virginia ! And the sad but 
ludicrous absurdity of popular credulity, even among men of 
respectable information, is illustrated by the fact that Messrs. 
Clay and Leigh were regarded as paragons of uniform con- 
sistency, whilst Mr. Tyler was denounced as a traitor to his 
principles and to his party. But the Muse of History is now 
reviewing the lives of the men of that day, and her truth is 
slowly but surely lighting up with her torches the wreck of 
error loug past, and will vindicate herself. 

Mr. Tyler, from the beginning of his public life, was exceed- 
ingly popular, overwhelming all opponents. He was elected to 
the legislature five times in succession, first to the session of 
181 1-12, and last to the session of 1815-16 ; and during that of 
1815-16, whilst a member of the House of Delegates, he was 
elected, by a large vote of the two houses, one of the Executive 
Council in Virginia. He continued to act in the Executive 
Council until November, 1816, when a vacancy occurred in the 
representation in Congress from the Richmond district, by the 
death of the Hon. John Clopton. Mr. Tyler and Andrew 
Stevenson, then Speaker of the House of Delegates, afterwards 
Speaker of the House of Representatives in Congress and 
Minister to England, were the candidates ; both belonged to the 
same political party, the Democratic Republican, both were 
popular and powerful on the "stump" when the "stump" was 
a great moral and political monitor of the people and touchstone 
of candidates, each relied upon his personal influence, and Mr. 
Tyler, as usual, and as ever before and after, was successful. 
He had in March, 1816, reached the twenty-sixth year of his age, 
was elected at the first election after he was eligible, and took 
his seat in the Congress of the United States at the second ses- 
sion of the Fourteenth Congress, in December, 1816. His success 
at the commencement of his career was doubtless owing not 
only to the great influence of his own family, and especially of 
his father, and to his own genius and genial manners, but also 



THE THIRD DECADE. 59 

to his tappy early marriage, on the anniversary of his birth, the 
29th of March, 1813, to Letitia Christian, the third daiig-liter of 
Robert Christian, Esq., of Cedar Grove, in the county of New 
Kent, Yirgiuia. This marriage united the House of Democracy, 
in the bridegroom, with the House of Federalism, in the bride. 
The father of the bridegroom was no less the friend and ad- 
herent of Thomas Jefferson, than the father of the bride was 
the friend and adherent of George Washington. Robert 
Christian was one of the main leaders of the Federal party, 
and was necessarily so from being the honored head of a 
name the most numerous on the peninsula of the James and 
the York. 

During the late Confederate war, we were struck with the 
singular fact that almost every fifth white man we met in 
Charles City and New Kent was a Christian, and almost every 
other colored freeman we met was a Ghai-ity. On one occasion, 
we told the crowd in one of these counties that they were the 
most and best Christians and the most and worst Qharities we 
had ever known ; but that was in the heat of war, when the free 
colored people were supposed to be our enemies and spies upon 
our struggle, and the Christians were all our friends and fellow- 
patriots. 

Robert Christian was a gentleman and patriot, the father of 
the late Judge John B. Christian, and he and his brother were 
men of mark and influence. Letitia Christian is enrolled by 
Mrs. HoUoway among the ladies of the White House as one 
of the sweetest matrons ever there. She was born in the same 
year with her husband, he in March, and she on the 12th of 
November, HOO, and proved, as a true woman can always 
prove, that a lady need not be so much the junior of her lord to 
hold his heart by a love-cord strong as life and lasting to the 
death. We knew her. She was a matron of gentle sweetness, 
such as could not but grow up lovely from a stock so strong, 
nurtured by parents so graceful, and cherished by a manly hus- 
band's love, to whom her love was ever fresh and youthful to 
the last. Her beauty budded forth in " piety and domestic vir- 
tues." Mr. Tyler's union with her in holy wedlock made him 



60 SEVEN DECADES OF THE UNIOX. 

blessed of Heaven, happy in his home, and strong in the favor 
of men of both political parties. She bore him a houseful of 
children. His chivalrous homage to woman, and his delicate 
refinement of attentions to a wife, made her a devotee of home. 
He w^as extremely affectionate and indulgent to his children. 
The highest compliment he could pay them was to count upon 
tiiem, as he did, with implicit confidence, and he gave them 
every opportunity to acquire all the cultivation necessary to 
enable them to excel. His daughters were tended and trained 
by a sweet, tender, mild, pious, discreet mother to all the duties 
and all the charms of that being described by but one word — 
lady. Mr. Tyler was proud of his children, and passionately 
fond of them, but his wife trembled and prayed for them. She 
was not exalted by her elevation to the White House, and 
sighed always for her happy home in Gloucester. 

Married at the age of twenty-three, elected to Congress at 
the first election after he was eligible, his national career com- 
menced just as Mr. Madison's administration closed and Mr. 
Monroe's commenced. The middle of this, his third decade in 
life, was a remarkable epoch in the history of the United States. 
The scenes of the war had been enacted. Its first baffling and 
futile measures had been abandoned, after causing what was 
denounced as treason and rebellion in the New England States. 
Its feeble negotiations at first had only irritated its causes. The 
doubtful affair of the Little Belt had occurred. British officers 
and agents had incited the Indians to war in the Northwest. 
The league of the Shawnee Prophet and Tecuraseh with the 
Creeks, Choctaws, and Chickasaws of the South, had been 
broken by General Harrison at the junction of the Wabash and 
the Tippecanoe. The insult of the Leopard, five years before, 
had been repaired, but the orders in council remained, and, 
when revoked, the right of search and impressment was still 
claimed and persisted in. 

The war had been at last hesitatingly proclaimed, under 
protest from the Federal opposition. The attempt to conquer 
Canada had failed, and our strength had been wasted in the 
effort. Queenstown Heights had been stormed. The New 



THE THIRD DECADE. 61 

Fork militia, in spite of all the brave A^an Rensselaer could do, 
had refused to cross the Niagara. The only victories on land of 
the year 1812 had been won at Sackett's Harbor and Ogdens- 
bnrg, and at the defense of Fort Wayne. 

The massacre of the Pottowatomies had occurred at Fort 
Dearborn. The Essex had captured the Alert. The frigate 
Constitution had outmanoeuvred a British squadron, and, in 
her escape, had captured the Guerriere. The Wasp had cap- 
tured the Frolic; the United States the Macedonian ; the Con- 
stitution the Java ; and three hundred prizes, by our men-of- 
war and privateers, had been taken by the end of the year of 
the declaration of war. Madison had been re-elected President, 
and Gerry elected Vice-President in place of Clinton, who had 
died. The policy of reinvading Canada had been pursued in 
vain. The defeat of Winchester and the massacre at th? river 
Raisin had disgraced the British arms. Harrison had been 
besieged at Fort Meigs by Proctor and Tecumseh. Croghan 
had gloriously defended Fort Stephenson. Pike had fallen in 
taking Toronto. Fort George had been stormed. Perry had 
won his victory on Lake Erie, and reported, " We have met 
the enemy, and they are ours." Harrison had conquered, and 
Tecumseh had fallen at the Thames. Fort Niagara and Lewis- 
town had been sacked. Armstrong had failed egregiously 
against Montreal ; and the American forces barely saved at 
Chrysler's Field. Wilkinson had been disgracefully repulsed 
at La Colle. The Hornet had captured the Peacock. Tlie 
Shannon had captured the unlucky Chesapeake, and Lawrence 
had been killed giving his last order, " Don't give up the ship ; 
fight her till she sinks." The whole of our coasts had been 
closely blockaded. The Constitution, -the United States, and 
Macedonian frigates had been shut up in port. Decatur's at- 
tempt to get to sea had been betrayed by the blue-light signals 
to the enemy, and this had fixed the name of " Blue-Lights" on 
the Federalists. Cockburn had ravaged Lewistown, on the 
Delaware, and Frenchtown, Havre de Grace, Frederickton, and 
Georgetown, at the head of the Chesapeake Bay. General 
Robert Taylor had successfully and gallantly defended Norfolk, 



62 SEVEN DECADES OF THE UNION. 

at Craney Igland. Cockbiirn had not only ravaged but ravished 
HaiiiptoQ, and his disgrace had been indelibly branded upon 
his brow by the pen of Taylor, which was sharp as his sword. 
The Creek war had burst out in the Southern Territory. The 
commerce and carrying trade of the United States had been 
nearly destroyed. Revenue had failed, taxes had been inci'eased 
to such a burden that the opposition to the war grew so strong 
as to threaten its abandonment. The defeat of Napoleon, in 
April, 1814, had let the British forces in Europe loose upon 
America. Fort Mimms, on the Alabama River, had been cap- 
tured by the Creek Indians, and the garrison and occupants 
been massacred. Jackson and Coffee had punished the Indians 
at Tallaschatche and Talladega, and Floyd had taken vengeance 
at Autosse. Claiborne had routed Weatherford at Eccamachea, 
and driven him over the perpendicular bluff into the flood below. 
Jackson and Coffee had burnt the Indians out at Topeka, or 
the Horse Shoe of Tallapoosa River. The Creeks had been 
crushed, and begged for peace. Weathersford had ridden into 
Jackson's camp and surrendered by a speech the most remark- 
able of any in the Indian tongues. A peace had been concluded 
with his nation in August, 1814. In the Northern campaign, 
on the St. Lawrence frontier, General Brown had crossed the 
Niagara and taken Fort Erie. General Scott had met Riall at 
Chippewa, and Riall and Drummond at Lundy's Lane ; and 
Miller had won the sobriquet of " I'll try, sir." Ripley had 
repulsed the enemy at Fort Erie. General McComb and Com- 
modore McDonough had won the victory at Plattsburg. Coch- 
rane had been ordered to destroy the coast towns and ravage 
the country of the Chesapeake. Ross had captured the Capitol 
and ravaged Washington City, and plundered Alexandria, 
Eastport had been taken, Stonington bombarded, and Bangor 
plundered. Fort McHenry had defended Baltimore whilst the 
anthem of the " Star-Spangled Banner" was written. 

The British had supplied the Creek Indians with arms from 
Pensacola, and Fort Bowyer had been invaded from that point, 
and the enemy repulsed. General Jackson had captured Pen- 
sacola, and gained the victory at New Orleans, and paid his 



THE THIRD DECADE. 63 

fiuo for contempt of Judge Ilall. Maritime commerce of th^ 
United States had been almost at an end ; but tlie Essex had 
swept the ocean for prizes, and had been captured by the 
Phoebe and Cherub in bad faith. The Peacock had captured 
the Epervier. The President had been captured by five ships 
of the British blockading squadron, after crippling the Endy- 
mion. The Wasp had captured the Reindeer, and had made 
the Avon surrender. By the intermediation of Pvussia, peace 
at last was obliged to be made, and left the country exhausted, ' 
with one hundred millions of debt, and an empty treasury. Vol- 
unteering had ceased before the peace, and Massachusetts and 
Connecticut had refused to send their militia to the Northern 
frontier. The discontent in New England had increased. Mas- 
sachusetts had called the Hartford Convention, which had 
clamored for alterations of the Constitution to limit the Federal 
authority. 

At last the treaty of peace had been ratified, February H, 
1815, but no concession had been made of the American de- 
mands in regard to the right of search and impressment. To 
repair the damages of war, the tariff of duties was raised, pro- 
tection was sought for the home manufacturers by heavy duties 
and imposts, and a national bank was established at Philadel- 
phia the 4th of March, 1817, with the approval of President 
Madison. The Barbary powers of Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli 
had been subdued. Louisiana and Indiana had been admitted 
into the Union. The Colonization Society had been formed, to 
provide a colony of civilized, liberated slaves, after much oppo- 
sition in Congress, denying the power of the Federal govern- 
ment to interfere with the subject or to found the present Re- 
public of Liberia. Mr. Monroe had succeeded Mr. Madison. 
Such was the course and state of events when Mr. Tyler en- 
tered Congress. 

There was a pause in party strife, — a calm after the storm. 
It was ominous, and has never been correctly described. The 
hackneyed phrase, " We arc all Democrats and all Federalists," 
does not give the sense or show the color of the times, or paint 
the era. It demanded a new observation, and required a new 



64 SEVEN DECADES OF THE UNION: 

departure. The thirteen colonies had grown into nineteen free, 
sovereign, and independent States, and by a severe contest in 
the second struggle with Great Britain had proved that they 
could and would fulfill a great and surprising destiny. A new 
reckoning had to be taken after the storm, and it is wonderful 
to look back to the logarithms of history and see the complex 
calculations by which to reckon where the ship of state was, 
and whither she was tending. Vast exchanges of positions 
were made by leading men. Intrigues of peace succeeded and 
supplanted action in war. The results of the war, the admis- 
sion of six new States, the immense expanse of the eminent 
domain by the acquisition of Louisiana, and the lull of party 
strife in the election of Mr. Monroe, inaugurated a new epoch 
on the 4th of March, 1817. It was the hour of transit from the 
Humanities to the material and physical. 

Mr. Clay and Mr. Calhoun, the two Democratic leaders of 
the war party of 1812, changed their positions by becoming the 
leaders of the Federal party, in respect to the United States 
Bank charter, in 1816, voted for by Mr. Clay, and the great 
scheme of internal improvements by the Federal government, 
projected by the mighty mind of Mr. Calhoun in 1816-1 Y. Here 
is another popular error to be noted. This generation generally 
takes it for granted that Mr. Clay was the author of the system 
of the national internal improvements. Nothing is more in- 
correct. Mr. Calhoun was its founder, on the broadest views 
of expediency, and Mr. Clay did not take it up until years after, 
when he embraced it in his grand policy of what was called his 
"American System," and then Mr. Calhoun gave up his own 
bantling, disowned it, changing on the question of the power 
in the Federal government to make internal improvements, just 
as Mr. Clay had changed on the question of the power of Con- 
gress to charter a United States Bank. But Mr. Tyler, as we 
have said, held steady by the needle of the compass of Democ- 
racy, pointing to the star of strict construction. 

On the famous Compensation Bill he again manfully main- 
tained the right of the constituents to instruct their representa- 
tives, and the duty of the latter either to obey or resign. He 



THE THIRD DECADE. 65 

won a victory in debate on tbat question, at his first session of 
service, against two very able'opponents, Mr. Grosvenor, of New 
York, and Mr. J. M. Clayton, of Delaware. He stood on the very 
ground he occupied in 1812, and this must be remembered by 
those who would censure his course of resigning afterwards, when 
he was instructed in 1836 to vote for the expunging resolutions 
of Mr. Benton. 

At the first terra, too, he opposed the bill of Mr. Calhoun to set 
apart for purposes of internal improvement the bonus and the 
government share of dividends of the Bank of the United States. 

Unfortunately, the doctrine of strict construction in respect to 
the powers of the general government to build roads and canals, 
was opposed to the genius of the continent, and to the irresist- 
ible force of coming causes, which have operated since with a 
certainty and rapidity beyond all human calculations. 

The immense enlargement of the eminent domain, the rapid 
admission of new States, the flood of immigration, the innumer- 
able wants and necessities of new settlers in the new States and 
Territories, and the tendency of steam, all demanded the exer- 
cise of the power to construct the national improvements. Had 
Mr. Calhoun adhered to his first foundations of the system, 
resting himself on the necessities and proper wants of bur coun- 
try's vast new settlements, he would probably have been the 
most influential public man of his day ; he might have changed 
the destiny of the Southern section to which he belonged, and 
have made it keep j^ace with the progress of other sections of 
the country, which have since dwarfed it in the Union, and he 
might have preserved the popularity of the Democratic party 
and been promoted to the Presidency. The war, which he so 
ably supported, had shown the necessity for means and ways 
of transportation, and peace was the time to prepare for war. He 
foresaw much, but neither he nor any one else foresaw what was 
coming. The vastness of his own conceptions he himself did 
not seem fully to comprehend. Neither he nor any one else then ' 
conceived the extent of turnpikes and canals and railroads and 
steam transportation and telegraph lines that this continent 
would absolutely require in his day, much less how rapidly they 

5 



66 SEVEN DECADES OF THE UNION. 

would increase after his death. Had they been begun in 1816- 
17, instead of being vetoed, and 'steadily pursued on a grand 
and impartial scale, extended equally to all sections, North and 
South, East and West, in forty years this Union would have 
been bound together too indlssolubly by homogeneity of inter- 
est ever to have been threatened and actually marred by the 
sectional war of 1861. Yes 1- even the mind of Mr. Calhoun 
erred lamentably in departing from that foundation, and the 
Democratic party erred in not following his lead on that 
question, whether he continued to lead or not. The Constitu- 
tion itself allows the " means necessary and proper," and in- 
ternal improvements are both " necessary and proper" to this 
continent, so vast and various in its extent, superficies, topogra- 
phy, mineralogy, products, and population. Time has proved 
that the necessity was the true law of that subject, and it was 
in the letter of the Constitution because it was in the very land 
of the countty. 

Mr. Clay afterwards took up " the wondrous tale" begun by 
Calhoun, and broke down the party of his first love by the 
power of that necessity. Federalism laid hold of that neces- 
sity, and again the doctrine of the " general welfare" revived, 
and has increased until all the limitations of the Constitution 
are broken down, and merely incidental, and necessary and 
proper powers consistent and congruous with those granted 
have become primary, discretionary, and optional powers of 
legislation or congressional expediency. 

But we must mark this period of a pa\ se and change in 
politics as no negative epoch of individual men and parties. 
It must be treated in a higher, holier light of Providence and 
of Philosophy. We have said that at the beginning of the his- 
tory of the United States the Humanities were called for by the 
continent of America ; and they came, and did their work well 
in giving to man the best bills of rights, the best constitutions 
of government, ever known before ; and they were first needed 
by the earlier settlers to establish the true, moral, social, and 
political codes for the government of men. They gave our 
respective peoples municipalities for protection of their rights. 



THE THIRD DECADE. 67 ' 

But the gigantic physique of the country reqiiired the physical 
sciences and works in turn, after the first works of the Human- 
ities VA'ere laid to develop the manmioth materialism of this 
continent. ' Not only had the Reformers been at work, and cen- 
turies of work been done before the dawn of the Reformation, 
from the moment when the fountains of life were opened in the 
Temple by the divine disputation with the doctors ; from the 
time when persecution made Christianity so strong as that its 
champions and martyrs proclaimed an emperor over the seven 
hills of Rome; when it had so governedythe world as to give it 
the Justinian Code, when it had founded Cambridge and Oxford 
schools in England, and the University at Glasgow, in Scot- 
land. Not onh^, we say, had the Humanities been working out 
their problems since the time of Christ, but the physical sciences, 
too, had their Columbus, Copernicus, Tycho Brahe, Kepler, 
Galileo, Newton, Franklin, Arkwright, Fulton, Watt, Ilerschel, 
La Place, Godfrey, Cartvvright, Whitney, and other hosts of 
Titans at work ; and then came the wars of Napoleon, ending in 
1815, mightier than all, to develop the arts and to apply chem- 
istry and mathematics and civil engineering. 

All the results of physical science thus studied and developed 
and applied were called for by this continent. It was then a 
crude world, calling lustily, we say, for the combinations of 
applied science. We needed mathematics, natural philosophy, 
chemistry, mechanics, civil engineering, galvanism, and elec- 
tricity, — and no one knew then that Morse was soon coming 
after, to course metallic wires with wings of messages swifter 
than the wings of Pegasus, through the air, and over the land, 
and under the "deep, deep sea!" 

Physical science was to have its day begin after the close of 
the epoch of 1815. Thence the Humanities began to be neg- 
lected, and were left behind as too slow for the locomotion of 
the age. And therein is the moral of the loss of the reign of j 
constitutional law, and the ascendency of materialism, and the ■ 
ready question of the age as to anything, " Will it pay ?" " Will 
it pay money ?" " What is the per cent, of pecuniary profit ?" 

But we must ever guard against the mistake of placing the 



68 SEVEN DECADES OF THE UNI OK. 

moral in antagonism with the physical or material construction. 
That has ever been one of the grossest and most mischievous 
errors of the world in every period of history. We repeat, that 
the error of supposed antagonism between the Humanities and 
the Physiques of earth has led to some of the most wondrous 
discords of human imperfection. The divines once dreaded 
the sciences of mineralogy, geology, and astronomy as actual 
enemies of Revelation. What was material was looked on as 
the opposite of spiritual. But what a revelation of Nature 
has since been made, elucidating instead of contradicting the 
Word by the works of God, and proving that all human knowl- 
edge, spiritual and physical alike, comes from God's works 
harmonizing beautifully with God's Word and Spirit ! The 
one is not more pure and ethereal of its kind than the other. 
Shakspeare's Ariel amid the flaming shrouds of shipwreck is 
not a proximate type even of the mysterious monads of matter 
which Chemistry, with more than magic power, puts in motion 
in the baking of a loaf of bread for man's wholesome nourish- 
ment. Behold Gravitation aplunibing his line of central attrac- 
tion ! Magnetism standing steady, pointing to a single star in 
the heavens ! Heat and light expanding solids and liquids into 
vapor and air, with a power to conquer distance and time ! 
Cold contracting oceans into crystal continents 1 Crystalliza- 
tion grouping its grotto of mysteries, and Electricity shooting 
nervous vitality through all agitated space 1 

Matter is not gross ; it is subtle and sublime, and must be so 
to be the habitation and agent of mind and spirit. Spirit is 
not defiled by matter, but matter is sublimed by spirit I Events 
of the world from 1790 to 1815 showed how essential to human 
power and mental development matter in all its forms and com- 
binations is. To be without form was to be void. Not only 
did the wars of Napoleon show this in being everything to the 
savans of science, but matter and morals were personified in 
the two Humboldts, Alexander and William. William com- 
muned with Goethe and Schiller, and drank from the Greek 
and Roman fountains which he found in Italy; this he did 
whilst the younger explorer was measuring the dragon-tree at 



; THE THIRD DECADE. 69 

Teneriffe, and inscribing his name highest on Chimborazo. 
Alexander's Cosmos is wonderful ; it has put scores of savans 
at work upon the filling of its outlines, and they have not yet 
exhausted his discoveries ; but the " Cosmos" does not exceed, 
and hardly equals, the spiritual of his brother of the Humani- 
ties. The two noble brothers illustrate that the spiritual is the 
life ofthe physical. They show how spirit and matter not 
only harmonize with each other, but are necessary to each 
other in God's universe of spiritual and physical ; how they 
sublimate into each other, and are nearer and nearer together, 
and become nearer and nearer the same, as they approach 
nearer and nearer in time and eternity to God, the Maker of 
both, — of that God who made the revelation of the Divine 
Nature tangible and comprehensible to the finite mind by 
making human flesh the temple of clay in which the Spirit of 
God is revealed ! The spiritual and the physical are both es- 
sential to the life and well-being of men and of nations. Neither 
must be allowed to predominate, but each must be harmoniously 
equipoised by the other. And this is the great first lesson to 
be taught in the science of human government. Up to 1815 
the moral and abstract school predominated in the American 
government, and then began the reign of the physical and con- 
crete, disregarding too much the Humanities. Each in turn 
has predominated, and now the beam is kicked in favor of the- 
physical. The Titanic school is now in vogue, and its first 
work was the national turnpike from Cumberland to Wheel- 
ing, with its monument on the wayside to Henry Clay, and 
now at its climax in California railways, in the Atlantic cable, 
— all resulting in expedient and practical, — and in the absolute 
war power of the supreme Congress ! 

We have not yet begun to discern that God's harmonizing 
government is the adjustment of the two parts of humanity, — 
the moral and physical, the mental and material. All now is 
physical force ; and this is the dragon's tooth which sprouted 
the armed men of civil war, teaching us that the Humanities 
must be restored ; that something better must be studied than 
the curriculum of West Point. 



70 SEVEN DECADES OF THE UNION. 

After the war of 1812, the rush of the crowds of emigrants from 
Europe to this couutry, seeking naturalization in this asylum 
of liberty, should have been appalling to tyrants only ; but it 
begat a feeling of opposition from those in this country who 
dreaded the power of the democratic masses. The land laws 
came into play with magical effect, building settlements in a 
day. The navigation acts were reviewed, and commerce un- 
fettered; " free trade" sprang forth, with no silken sails of Cleo- 
Itatra, but with a canvas of cotton ; and every day opened a new 
harvest-field in the Western forests and prairies. Congress had 
1)ut to say, " Let there be Territories and new States," and 
there were Territories and new States. The wonder of the 
world was, not that their creation was so easy, but that they 
were all so consentaneously assimilated in the assertion of 
rights, and, above all, the rights of self-government. The " E 
Pluribus Unum" was a mystery evolved by America for the 
wonder of the Old World, — " One, as to the world besides ; many 
among ourselves," — the many growing out of and strengthened 
by each one, and the one fortified by the many. This was a 
union never known before, — stronger in its many parts by the 
parts making all one, by one law for the whole, and by the whole 
law^s of the many. This was apparently a complete solution 
for a continent so vast, and the experiment so far seemed to 
succeed in making our country the theater for a new life and 
liberty for all mankind. But, alas! the States had hardly mul- 
tiplied to the number of twenty-four when the canker of con- 
struction raged red again in the memorable Missouri question 
of 1820-21. This began a war of sections and of races, which 
ended in secession and in the sacrifice of civil liberty in men, 
and of sovereignty in States. 

Mr. Tyler opposed the internal improvement policy of Mr. 
Calhoun, but ably supported all the great measures necessary 
to repair the breaches of the war; and in April, 1817, he was 
re-elected to the House of Representatives by an overwhelming 
popular majority. From 1817 to 1819 his action on the South 
American question, the recognition of the de facto independ- 
ence of the colonies of Spain, upon the renewed question of 



THE THIRD DECADE. <^l 

internal improvements by the Federal government, upon the 
repeal of internal taxes, upon a uniform system of bankruptcy, 
and especially upon the inquiry whether the Bank of the United 
States had violated its charter, met with the approbation of 
Ills constituents, raised his reputation as an able statesman and 
debater, and proved the consistency of his course in after-life. 
He was on the committee with Messrs. J. C. Spencer, Lowndes, 
McLane, and Bur well, to investigate the affairs of the bank, — 
to determine the question whether its charter was forfeited. 
This committee acted, and reported during the Fifteenth Con- 
gress, from 1817 to 1819; and during the debate of that time, 
on the questions whether the charter had been violated so as to 
inure a forfeiture, and, if so, whether it was expedient to exact 
the forfeiture, he declared emphatically and argued strenuously 
to prove that the creation of the bank " was unconstitutional, 
and that he could not, without a violation of his oath, hesitate 
to repair the breach in the Constitution, when an opportunity 
presented itself of so doing without violating the public faith." 



CHAPTER lY. 

THE FOURTH DEOADE, FROM 1830 TO 1830, 

The Second Term of Mr. Monroe — The Debate on the Execution of Arbuthno. 
and Ambrister — The Presidential Election in 1824 — General Jackson. 

In the debate in the House of Representatives during the 
first term of Mr. Monroe, Mr. Tyler took very strong and de- 
cided grounds in disapprobation of the proceedings of General 
Jackson in invading St. Marks and Pensacola and executing 
Arbuthnot and Ambrister. In after-time it cut him off from 
the favor of that great and powerful man, though Mr. Tyler 
supported his election to the Presidency, and mainly his ad- 
ministration. His speech on the limitation of military authority, 
involved in the resolution reported by Mr. Nelson, of Virginia, 
condemning the conduct of General Jackson, was one of the 
ablest and most eloquent he ever made. One of its passages 
ought to be repeated at this day, or at any other, when hero- 
worship becomes a besetting sin of the people. He said, " Your 
liberties cannot be preserved by the fame of any man. The 
triumph of the hero may^swell the pride of your country, elevate 
you in the estimation of foreign nations, give to you a character 
for chivalry and valor ; but recollect, I beseech you, that the 
sheet-anchor of our safety is the Constitution of our country. 
Say that you ornament these walls with the trophies of victory, 
that the flags of the conquered nations wave over your head, — 
what avail these symbols of your glory if the Constitution be 
destroyed? . . . Why do gentlemen point to the services 
of the hero in former wars ? For his conduct there he has re- 
ceived a nation's plaudits and a nation's gratitude. We come 
to other acts. If just, we must look alone to the act, and not 
to the actor. A republic should act as in the case of the Roman 
Manlius, and disapprove the conduct of her dearest son, if that 
(t2) 



THE FOURTH DECADE. - 73 

son has erred. From what quarter do you expect your liberties 
to be invaded? Not from the man whom you despise: against 
him you are always on guard; his example will not be danger- 
ous. You have more to fear from a nation's favorite ; from him 
whose path has been a path of glory, who has won your grati- 
tude and confidence ; against his errors you have to guard, lest 
they should grow into precedents, and become in the end the 
law of the land. It is this consideration, and this only, which 
will induce me to disapprove the conduct of General Jackson." 

But this disapproval, though thus courteously, kindly, and 
wisely couched. General Jackson remembered afterwards and 
did not forgive. John Quiucy Adams, in the Cabinet of Monroe, 
sustained his invasion of Pensacola, and the thanks for his sup- 
port he received afterwards from General Jackson when the 
issues of Texas were joined, which we will advert to again. 

Mr, Calhoun's opposition to his proceedings in the Seminole 
campaign, in the same Cabinet where Adams sustained them, 
was made the groundwork afterwards of that estrangement be- 
tween him and General Jackson which caused the great split 
of the State-Rights from the Loeofoco faction of the Democratic 
party, and the election of Mr. Van Buren to the Presidency. 

Mr. Tyler was re-elected to a seat in the House of Repre- 
sentatives of the Congress of the United States in the spring 
of 1819. Besides having to do with the questions of the tariff, 
and of protection to domestic manufactures, upon both of which 
he continued to prove his Democratic Republican orthodoxy of 
strict construction, he was brought to act on a question, — the 
admission of the State of Missouri into the Union, witli con- 
ditions to exclude slavery from the new State, — directly in- 
volving slavery, containing the seeds of death, which ultimately, 
forty-one years thereafter, brought civil war and all our woe. 
The faith of strict construction, and limitation of the powers 
of the Federal government, had been contending first with 
" incidental power," then with the doctrine of " general wel- 
fare," and now was sown the germ of the fatal faith of the 
"higher law," — that not only the Constitution was general 
and universal in all its granted and implied and incidental 



74 SEVUy DECADES OF THE UNION: 

powers, but its prohibitions were to be disregarded by tlie 
majority if their religion required them to yield to what their 
moral sense dictated to be the divine law and will. In a word, 
the consciences and convictions of a majority of the States, or 
people, were to be substituted for constitutional rule, and the 
will of a majority was to be the Providence not of a confederate 
but of a consolidated nation. 

It is a wonder now that the restriction placed upon the ter- 
ritory, other than Missouri, north of 36° 30', in 1821, did not 
then cause a dismemberment of the Union Then forcible re- 
sistance to the breach of the Federal government would have 
been effectual. But after destroying the equality of settling 
Territories and forming new States, after the entire Northwest 
had been filled with a powerful population, overvvhelniing in 
the representation in Congress, it was too late to contend for a 
restoration of the Constitution or a separation of the Union. 
Slavery was then doomed. It is needless to say that Mr. 
Tyler had always opposed the latitude of construction by which 
the Missouri Compromise prevailed, and that he always foresaw 
and predicted that the prohibition of slavery by Congress in any 
of the Territories or new States would eventually abolish it in 
all the States where it existed, by violent revolutionary means. 
The line of 36° 30' was not a line saying, " Thus far shalt thou 
go, and no farther," but it was a mark of the doom of slavery 
on this continent, plainly proclaiming that it should not exist 
anywhere at all. 

Before the close of this signally fatal Congress be resigned 
his seat in the House of Representatives, for reason of extreme 
illness, which for a time threatened his life. He had been in 
Congress five years, and made his mark firmly as a statesman, 
as a consistent, strict Democrat of the school of Thomas Jeffer- 
son, and as a man who, by his talents, integrity, dignity and 
urbanity, had won a most enviable influence and high reputa- 
tion. Ten years' service — from his twenty-first to his thirty- 
first year — had made him known to the nation and beloved by 
his native State. He soon recovered his health, and in 1823 
was uru:ed acrain to become a member of the Virginia Legisla- 



THE FOTJRTU DECADE. 75 

ture. He served with emiuent usefulness for two years, and in 
December, 1825, was elected by the General Assembly governor 
of the State, succeeding his Excellency James Pleasants. 

We have adverted to the common saying that Mr. Monroe's 
time was a time of truce, if not of peace, between parties. Pity 
it was seemingly so only. In the delusive, treacherous calm 
of the times from 1811 to 1825, construction gained its most 
expansive latitude, rival factions brooded their worst mischiefs, 
leaders rose from every section, and theories of government 
began which could not but end in anarchy, or despotism, or 
war ; and politicians " chassed" into new Protean shapes for 
the best prospects of pay and promotion in the current revolu- 
tion. The star of the Great West had risen, the public lands 
were political prey and prize, and corruption had become a 
commerce. The Cabinet of Mr. Monroe contained no less than 
three aspirants for the Presidency, — Mr. Crawford, an invalid, 
Mr. Adams, a latitudinarian and fanatical statesman of the 
highest training, learning, industry, and will, and Mr. Calhoun, 
a giant of intellect, who was a child in party tactics, and a 
founder of new political theories. The invalid and the man 
whose mind was like " Michael Angelo's dome in the heavens, 
without scaffolding of thought," were from the extreme South ; 
the fanatical scholar-statesman was from the North ; and the 
Ohio Valley, then the center of the growing West, had two can- 
didates outside of the Cabinet, who were more formidable than 
all, — Andrew Jackson, of Tennessee, and Henry Clay, of Ken- 
tucky. Sections, as well as men, were rivals. Such a time of 
complicated intrigue, still and lying in wait, was not favorable 
to the truths of the Constitution, and was disastrous to the fed- 
erative principles of government. They all tended to consolida- 
tion. With the archbishop in Runnymede, we may say of 
America as he said of Great Britain : 

" If I judge aright, 
The voice of freedom is not a still, small voice; 
'Tis in the fire, the thunder, and the storm 
The goddess Liberty delights to dwell. 
If I rightly foresee Britannia's fate, 



T6 SEVEN DECADES OF THE UNION. 

The hour of peril is the halcyon hour ; 
The shock of parties brings her best repose; 
Like her wild waves when working in a storm, 
That foam and war, and mingle earth and heaven. 
Yet guard the island which they seem to shake." 

The period of Mr. Monroe's administration was an hour of 
peril. So halcyon that it became stagnant, for want of the 
storm to purify its atmosphere; and it generated the political 
animalcula and fetor of bargain and corruption. 

In 1824, the race of the five candidates for the Presidency 
was about to develop an entirely new state of parties and po- 
litical relations, and a new influence of sections. The West 
was then felt distinctly for the first time to be a major estate 
in the empire. Which of the two old sections of the two old 
political parties — the New England or the Virginia school, the 
Federal or the Democratic Republican — was to have the alliance 
and the combined power of the West ? 

That was the problem to be solved, — the question to be an- 
swered. 

The old Federal party had two factions, — the one of the anti- 
war school, called the "Blue-Lights," and the other consisting 
of such leaders as had strongly advocated the war and all its 
measures, but agreed with the " Blue-Lights" in the most lati- 
tudinous construction of the Constitution, claiming the strongest 
powers for the general government, and that it was national, 
not federative, — consolidated and sovereign over the States and 
the people. And this war faction of the Federalists had come 
out from among the Democracy of the administration of Mr. 
Madison since his term of office had expired. The coalition of 
these two factions assumed a new political name, — that of the 
" National Republicans." Aiming to catch the West, they con- 
tended for the largest latitude of construction, encouraging in- 
ternal improvements and fostering immigration upon the most 
liberal terms to magnify and multiply the settlements of tbe new 
lands. To retain New England, they adopted the creed of pro- 



THE FOURTH DECADE. YY 

tection to domestic manufactures, and gave Ashing bounties and 
passed navigation acts to her content ; and, touching the pocket- 
nerve of the people everywhere, in every section, they set up 
public credit upon the Bank of the United States as its pedestal 
of power. Mr. Clay headed the War and the West faction, and 
Mr. John Quincy Adams headed the Puritanism of New Eng- 
land of this coalition. The hobby of this party was, "the 
American System," which Mr. Adams, during his term, carried 
as high as " lighthouses in the skies." 

And the Democratic party was likewise divided into factions. 
Mr. Crawford was the consistent representative man of the 
Jefferson school of strict construction in its purity. Mr. Cal- 
houn had belonged to the same school ; but he departed from 
its tenets as Secretary of War in the Cabinet of Mr. Monroe, 
and was the author of the system of internal improvement by 
the general government, but he still adhered to the Democratic 
party; and General Jackson, who had always been a Demo- 
crat, represented the "jude-milieu^'' faction between Mr. Craw- 
ford and Mr. Calhoun, and was justly classed with the Yirginia 
school of Democracy of the type of the war and of Mr. Madison. 

Perhaps one of the most graphic campaign papers ever pub- 
lished in this country was written by Thomas H. Fletcher, Esq., 
of Nashville, Tennessee, during that canvass for the Presi- 
dency. The title of the essay was " The Political Horse-Race." 
Each courser was minutely described, and each portrayed as 
he pranced or quietly walked upon the track. The prognostic 
of the jockey knowing one was all in favor of " Old Hickory," 
the most aged steed, who had seen most hard service ; of long 
body, firm and steady step, clean legs, in hard, low, whip-cord 
condition, of powerful loin, rather lank in look, but fire in his 
eye ; high in the withers, above a shoulder set at an angle of 
forty-five degrees; broad in the stifle, long in the tliigh, with 
a wide overreach in footprints ; hard hoofs, and cup-footed ; 
round in the rib-barrel ; deep in the chest, and nostrils like 
trumpet-DQZzles ; caprioling not at all, but erect and alive the 
moment mounted ; the daybreak and all the signs were for him ! 

But his rival, Mr. Clay, in the same section of the West, did 



•78 SEVE]V DECADES OF THE UXION. 

not so divine. He dreaded most the man with whom he po- 
litically agreed, Mr. Adams. He relied on the " American 
System" as strong enough to carry one or the other of its only 
two candidates, and his aim was to make himself the preferred 
of the two, Mr. Adams and himself. The celebrated Amos 
Kendall, who afterwards became his bitterest enemy and the 
most devoted protege of General Jackson, was then his lead- 
ing editor in Kentucky. The partisans of Mr. Clay, not as 
good jockeys as the author of " The Political Horse-Race, "judged 
that General Jackson had but little chance of election, and that 
they could well afford to praise him while they detracted from 
Mr. Adams with every sort of vituperation. They admitted 
General Jackson's patriotic life and services, acknowledged the 
national debt of gratitude due to him, but simply set him aside 
in the estimate of chances as a mere military man, — great as an 
Indian-fighter, and the most successful "Captain of cotton- 
bags," but he was a " Hickory," the best for ramrods, but not 
fit for " cabinet-ware.^'' But as to Mr. Adams, the abler he 
was as a trained scholar and statesman, the more dangerous he 
was to the " Great West ;" for they alleged that at Ghent he 
had offered to barter away the interests of the whole Missis- 
sippi Valley for the cod-fisheries of the Newfoundland Banks. 
Mr. Adams had had a long and bitter controversial correspond- 
ence with Mr. Russell, one of his co-commissioners at Ghent, in 
which he had been signally victorious, and Mr. C\&j, the other 
co-commissioner, had been neutral ; but now that this charge 
was made, openly assailing his course at Ghent, by Mr. Clay's 
leading journal and editor, on the tenderest point of popularity 
in the West, he caused Mr. Clay to be drawn out to say whether 
he indorsed the accusation against him, Mr. Adams, of betray- 
ing, or offering to betray, the interests of the Mississippi Valley. 
Mr. Clay did, in effect, indorse the charge under his own signa- 
ture in the public prints. Mr. Adams met the indorsement 
with indignant denial, and demanded the proofs. Mr. Clay very 
wisely declined to have such a controversy as Russell had expe- 
rienced with so ready a writer and one who always took notes 
and kept memoranda of every event of his life -vho was a 



THE FOURTH DECADE. 79 

perfect " raf7e-?necum" of facts, and who never failed to use 
tbem with a precision and pungency fatal to his adversaries, 
and contented himself with an excuse as to tiie impropriety of 
such a time as a political canvass for the Presidency to have a 
controversy with a rival to the damage of both, for the benefit 
of other aspirants, and he adjourned the question of fact asserted 
on the one part and denied on the other, to a more auspicious 
period. Mr. Adams reiterated his denial, and threw the onus of 
proof upon Mr. Clay until such time as he might deem it neces- 
sary to redeem his veracity. This is what is called " the ad- 
journed question of veracity" between these two champions of 
the same National Republican party and advocates of the same 
"American System" of politics. 

In this state of quintuple canvass between parties and fac- 
tions, the election of 1824 was held, and it resulted in General 
Jackson's receiving a plurality, but not a majority, of electoral 
votes, and this took the election into the House of Representa- 
tives. The House had to choose from three persons liaving the 
highest number of votes ; the votes had to be taken by States, 
the representation from each State having but one vote, a 
majority of all the States being necessary to a choice. General 
Jackson, Mr. Adams, and Mr. Crawford were the three highest 
on the list of those voted for as President. Here was a strug- 
gle which gave the arch-enemy of the " federative principle" 
of the government all the advantages of its federative effect. 
It was an election by States, not numerically, according to the 
proportion of electors, but by States in their federative unities 
and identities. Each of the six New England States counted 
one for Mr. Adams, and gave him a certain consitleraljle count 
at the first ballot. He ought to have remembered this forever 
after, whilst he was laboring a lifetime to show that State 
separate sovereignty was merged and consolidated into one 
nationality. 

The events of this period were the first to attract our atten- 
tion to public affairs and to the study of political life. 

General Jackson, in the fall of 1824, was on his way to 
attend the Congress which was to decide the issue of his sue- 



80 SEVEN DECADES OF THE UNION. 

cess or defeat in the election of the House of Representatives. 
He bad come up the Ohio to Wheeling, and there, placing his 
family in his own private carriage, which he brought up with 
him, he mounted his saddle-horse and traveled the Cumberland 
road, via Washington, Pennsylvania, to the metropolis. He 
reached Washington, Pennsylvania, in the evening, and stopped 
for the night at the principal hotel. The populace flocked to 
see the hero, and among the hero-worshipers who crowded 
around him was the eminent and excellent Andrew Wylie, D.D., 
president of the college. 

His presence immediately struck us by its majestic, command- 
ing mien. He was about six feet high, slender in form, long and 
straight in limb, a little rounded in the shoulders, but stood 
gracefully erect. His hair, not then white, but venerably gray, 
stood more erect than his person ; not long, but evenly cut, and 
each particular hair stood forth for itself a radius from a high and 
full-orbed head, chiseled with every mark of massive strength ; 
his brow was deep, but not heavy, and underneath its porch of 
the cranium were deep-set, cleai', small, blue eyes, which scin- 
tillated a light of quick perception like lightning, and then 
there was no fierceness in them. His cheek-bones were strong, 
and his jaw was rather " lantern ;" the nose was straight, long, 
and Grecian ; the upper lip the only heavy feature of his face, 
and his nasal muscle somewhat ghastly and ugly, but his 
mouth showed rocklike firmness, and his chin was manly as 
that of Mars. His teeth were long, as if the alveolar process 
had been absorbed, and were loose, and gave an ugly, ghastly 
expression to his nasal muscle. His chest was flat and broad. 
He was very unreserved in conversation, talked volubly and 
with animation, somewhat vehement and declamatory, though 
with perfect dignity and self-possession. He evidently wished 
to impress himself upon his visitors, but without any air of 
affectation, and his intent n.anner asserted his superiority. He 
hesitated not to dissent from any remark or opinion which 
called for contradiction ; but was extremely polite, though posi- 
tive in the extreme. He knew Dr. Wylie, and had the highest 
respect for his character and reverence for his religious profes- 



THE FOURTH DECADE. 81 

sion of the Presbyterian faith. "We were not awed by his 
presence, but intently studied him, and we augured his great- 
ness from his looks and words, which drew us close up to 
him. 

Dr. Wylie made the remark to him that he had no apprehension 
about the certainty of his being chosen by the House of Repre- 
sentatives, unless Congress was corrupted or beguiled by fac- 
tious intrigues. 

Immediately General Jackson replied, with flashing spirit, 
" Sir, no people ever lost their liberties unless they themselves 
first became corrupt. Our people are not yet, if they ever will 
be, corrupt ; and the Congress dares not decide this election by 
the intrigues of corruption, for fear of their sovereigns, the 
people. The people are the safeguards of their own liberties, 
and I rely wholly on them to guard themselves. They will 
correct any outrage upon political purity by Congress; and if 
they do not, now and ever, then they will become the slaves 
of Congress and its political corruption." 

This remark struck us then as indicating that he was fit to 
govern a republic, and it has come back to us a thousand times 
since with all the weight of truth and prophecy. He was our 
choice from that moment for the Presidency. 

The next morning a select corps of students obtained leave 
to join his escort on horseback for miles on his way. He rode 
a splendid chestnut sorrel, the stock of his old racer, Pacolet, 
which he bought from William R. Johnson, in Virginia; and 
we can see him now, a model of grace in the saddle, whilst he 
chatted at ease as his horse kept the pace of a quick traveling 
walk. He saluted us with marked valediction when the 
students in escort drew up to return, and bade us accept his 
acknowledgment of our courtesy, and the advice from him 
"to study hard to fit ourselves for the service of our country." 

We thus first knew Andrew Jackson, the greatest man, take 
him all in all, we have ever known among men. 

The next time we saw him was on his return, by the same 
route, the next spring. He had been defeated by " bargain and 
corruption" in Congress. His wrath was tremendous ; but ho 

6 

/ 



82 SEVEN DECADES OF THE UNION. 

seemed to be still more inspired by Lis unwavering faith in the 
people. He talked even more indignantly of the treatment of 
Mr. Calhoun, the Vice-President, than of that which he had 
received from Congress. 

Ninian Edwards had charged Mr. Calhoun with corruption 
in the War Department, and had immediately gone westward 
to avoid the investigation which Mr. Calhoun had promptly 
demanded, and the sergeaut-at-arms was in hot pursuit of him. 
Speaking of his own defeat, he hesitated not to declare his full 
conviction of the truth of the charge of "bargain and corrup- 
tion" brought by his friends against Mr. Clay and Mr. Adams. 
He believed in its truth until the day of his death ; but the 
version which he had received was not correct. The " old 
George Kremer" version was the vulgar one. That of Mr. 
Clay himself, repeatedly told by him, was, doubtless, the true 
one ; but it did not clear his skirts, and certainly not those of 
his friends and of Mr. Adams, of guilt. 

When the election came before the House of Representatives, 
Mr. Crawford could hardly be counted in the contest of the 
three rivals. His friends had endeavored to seclude him from 
the observation of visitors. He could with difficulty be seen. 
Many members preferred him to either General Jackson or Mr. 
Adams. They were doubtful only of his health, and this de- 
layed their determination to vote for him. At last it became 
known that he was a paralytic, and the contest rested then, of 
course, between General Jackson and Mr. Adams. Mr. Clay, 
then, and his friends, had to decide between these two. They 
were in an awkward quandary. Mr. Clay had resolved to vote 
for Mr. Adams. His reason was avowedly placed on the 
ground that General Jackson was a mere military man, and 
one of very arbitrary will, and that he had not the civil training 
for the Presidency; but the better reason, doubtless, with him 
was that General Jackson had always belonged to the Demo- 
cratic school of Mr. Jefferson, whilst Mr. Adams was thoroughly 
committed to Mr. Clay's American system. He urged his pref- 
erence upon his friends, especially the members from Kentucky 
and Ohio. They reminded Mr. Clay of what had been insisted 



THE FOURTH DECADE. S3 

upon by him and by them during the '^anvass, — that ^[r. Adams 
had been inimical to the interests of the valley of the Mis- 
sissippi ; and they could not see how they could reconcile 
their support of him then with their late denunciations of 
what they had termed his treachery to their constituents ; 
their constituents could hardly be expected to understand or 
tolerate the inconsistency; and it was known that Genei'al 
Jackson was friendly to their interests ; and, besides, they 
could not comprehend how Mr. Clay himself could support 
Mr. Adams while there was "an adjourned question of 
veracity" between them. 

Mr. Clay admitted the embarrassing category in which he 
and his friends were placed, but pertinaciously insisted on 
their union with him in the support of Mr. Adams. At last 
his frienfls consented to unite with him, provided he would 
give their constituents a guarantee that Mr. Adan)s would 
not be inimical to the interest of their section, by Mr. Clay's 
becoming the premier of the Adams administration. They 
could then have it to say that the valley of the Mississippi 
would be represented and guarded if he would accept the 
place of Secretary of State in Mr. Adams's Cabinet. He 
earnestly protested against this condition ; urged that it would 
impair bis prospects for the future, and that his acceptance 
of office would be ascribed to corrupt motives. But his friends 
were inexorable; they insisted that if they were to follow 
him, he should make the sacrifice to guard their course, and 
they made this condition a sine qua noa. He consented to 
make the sacrifice. The question then rose, how the matter 
was to be arranged with Mr. Adams. The mediators wore 
selected, and they approached Mr. Adams without any further 
intervention by Mr. Chiy. The negotiations were skillfully con- 
ducted, and soon reached a successful result. 

Mr. Adams was in effect asked, "Was he then, or ever, really 
inimical to the interests of the valley of the Mississippi?" The 
answer was, " Xo, he was not then, and never had been ; the 
accusation was false ; he had denied it ; had defied the proof 
of the charge ; bad called for it, and, as was well known, the 



84 SEVEN DECADES OF THE UNION. 

question of veracity was adjourned, and he was still waiting 
for the proof." 

This seemed sharp upon them and upon Mr. Clay ; neverthe- 
less, they steadily pursued their suit, and inquired further, 
" Whether, to manifest his sense of justice to their constituents, 
he would appoint his Secretary of State from the valley of the 
Mississippi?" 

He made no objection to select the Secretary of State from 
a section so important, and abounding, as it did, in men of the 
first rank of ability and experience. The next inquiry was, 
" Had he any personal animosity to Mr. Clay, on account of the 
question of ' adjourned veracity' between them ?" The answer 
was, "None whatever; he was content to leave Mr. Clay in 
that matter where he was until he made the proofs which he 
(Mr. A.) had challenged." 

" Would he, then, appoint Mr. Clay ?" 

He (Mr. Adams) knew of none abler or better qualified for 
the place in the valley of the Mississippi, and if the repre- 
sentatives of the valley preferred him, there was " no personal 
prejudice of his own in the way, and their preferences should 
prevail." Thus the bargain was made, in consideration of 
giving the appointment of State to Mr. Clay, against his per- 
sonal wishes, but to carry out his individual views of policy. 
Mr. Adams, the minority candidate, was elected President of 
the United States by the vote of the House of Representatives, 
voting by States. The charge of bargain and corruption, as it 
was made, was promptly denied and easily refuted, that he (Mr. 
Clay) had ever approached Mr. Adams ; but the truth fairly 
told leaves a case of casuistry still to be determined : Whether 
Mr. Clay's knowledge of, and consent to, the negotiation and 
its results was not a case of bargain for, and in consideration 
of, reciprocal offices, and whether that was or was not a case of 
corruption. It was certainlj" so thought at the time, and for 
years afterwards by the people of the United States. 

It had defeated their will, it made General Jackson, the 
victim in their name, forever afterwards their favorite ; and it 
embittered the contest of the National Democracy with the 



THE FOURTH DECADE. 85 

National Republicans even more than the past contests had 
been between the Democratic Republicans and the Federalists. 
The administration of Mr. Adams proved rampant in pressing 
latitudiuarianism to its ultimate extremes on the Bank and 
Manufactures and Public Lands and Foreign Relations, and his 
measures of internal improvements mounted to " lighthouses 
in the skies," and of the tariff" of 1828, descended to a " Bill of 
Abominations," as they were called. 

This united all the friends of Constitutional Limitations against 
him ; and when he gave his " Ebony and Topaz" toast, which 
has never been understood to this day, he was set down as a | 
visionary of some sort not to be trusted on the vital subject of 
the negro, and he and his party at the next election were 
crushed, as it was thought, forever. But time has shown that 
it was not to be so. His latitudinous and multitudinous works 
were continued by him to the day of his death in harness at 
'the Capitol, and they now survive him in ascendant terrific form 
of death to the Constitution and civil liberty. 

Mr. Tyler was engrossed in his office of Governor of Vir- 
ginia, earnestly endeavoring to promote the prosperity of the 
State, when he was suddenly called on to do funeral honors to 
the remains of the immortal Jefferson. The elder Adams 
and the Great Apostle died on the same day, the 4th of July, 
1826; and the governor pronounced, on the 11th of the same 
month, an oration on the life and death of the latter, which will 
compare favorably with any other composition of his life, and 
most favorably with the eulogium of General Harry Lee on 
Washington. 

He was alike distinguished by his messages to the legisla- 
ture, in the years 1826-27. The second time he was elected 
Governor of Virginia he was chosen unanimously. And then, 
the 13th of January, 1827, he was elected by the General As- 
sembly to a seat in the Senate of the United States, to succeed 
the illustrious John Randolph of Roanoke. 

This was the first contest of his life which involved any bit- 
terness of feeling and brought upon him any denunciation or 
reproach. Mr. Randolph's term was to expire oh the 4th of 



86 SEVEy DECADES OF THE UNION. 

March, 1827, and he was a candidate for re-election. He had 
become utterly odious to the Adams party, called the National 
Republicans, and obnoxious especially to the friends of Clay. He 
had denounced the coalition of 1825 between Adams and Clay 
as the union of the Puritan of New England and the blackleg 
of Kentucky, and had met Mr. Clay on the duel-ground. His 
" Jongo emandacior^^ speech, comparing Jackson and Adams 
Knowledge and Wisdom, was fully written out by himself, and 
is one of the most extraordinary productions of genius and elo- 
quence which ever emanated from the mind of man. No other 
man upon earth could have uttered it, in the same style and 
vein of critical comparison. He was suffering very much with 
sickness, — a chronic disease of the bowels, — and was exceed- 
ingly irritable and exacerbated ; he was sui generis, because no 
other man had his inspiration, and no man ever spake as he did. 
But he was often egregiously misrepresented. For example, he 
had to drink " toast-and-water," for the charcoal effect on his 
stomach, and, whilst speaking, often called for it: " Tims, more 
toast-and-water .'" And this was turned by malignant rei)orters 
into " Tims,.more porter /" And the rumor in this and innumer- 
able other instances got out and ran wild that he drank deeply 
and thus was betrayed into a maudlin invective. So it was 
that whilst the par-excellence State-Rights faction adhered to 
him, a large portion of the mass of the Democratic Republican 
party became restive under what they called his " eccentricity," 
— a term with which didactic dolts, common enough in mere 
routine to be justly enough said to have common, but no un- 
common, sense, detract from their superiors in powers, acqui- 
sitions, and the gifts of genius. They united with the friends 
of Adams, Cla}^ and Webster, — the National Republicans of 
the day, — and elected Mr. Tyler, whilst Governor of Virginia in 
bis second term, over Mr. Randolph, by a vote of one hundred 
and fifteen to one hundred and ten, on the 13th of January, 1827. 
Mr. Tyler did not seek the nomination, and he always declared 
that he was averse to it, preferring the honor of the office he 
then held, and really preferring, too, that Mr. Randolph should 
be chosen. 



THE FOURTH DECADE 87 

He declined to say that be would accept the place of senator. 
This he said to those inclined to support him; and when the 
peculiar friends of Mr. Randolph requested him "to say ex- 
plicitly that he would not abandon the chair of state at that 
time to accept a seat in the Senate," he replied, " That propriety 
and due regard to consistency of deportment required him to 
decline an answer then ;" adding, that " should the office, in 
opposition to his wishes (a result which he could not antici- 
pate), be conferred upon him, he w^ould then give to the 
expression of the legislative will such reflection, and pronounce 
such decision, as his sense of what was due to it might seem 
to require." 

This was written on the day of the election, and was produced 
before the General Assembly, and yet he was elected " in oppo- 
sition to his wishes." Mr. Randolph's friends rather assailed his 
personal independence before the ballot was brought to an issue, 
and their vindictiveness for reason of his not positively refusing 
to allow his name to be used, caused him, doubtless, in part, to 
accept the senatorship, which he did on the 18th of January, 1827. 
This lost him the personal and political friendship of all Mr. Ran- 
dolph's warm friends in his own party, and gained him no ad- 
herents among the National Republicans, or the partisans of the 
Adams administration, and was the first impairment of his 
popularity. The then administration party had no desire to 
promote Mr. Tyler, but he was the only man with whom they 
could defeat Mr. Randolph. No two men of deserved eminence 
and influence could be more unlike than were Mr. Tyler and 
Mr. Randolph, — the one genial, gentle, and bland, the other 
acetic and bitter; the one less gifted in genius and acquire- 
ments, the other less winning and influential and useful ; the 
one more inspired, more heliocentric in his views, the other 
more laborious to please, more practical, and always suc- 
cessful. It was difficult for him, or any man, to bear a contrast 
with Mr. Randolph as his successor ; and it is the highest 
encomium upon his abilities to say that he lost nothing by the 
ordeal to which his defeat of Mr. Randolph exposed him. 
What he lacked in classic taste and power of utterance and 



88 SEVEN DECADES OF THE UNION. 

wizard-like wisdom, he more than supplied by grace of manners, 
by sound judgment, and by a glowing goodness of heart. 

Byron s description of Lara might well portray the character « 
of Randolph : 

" A high demeanor, and a glance that took 
Their thoughts from others by a single look; 
And that sarcastic levity of tongue, 
The stinging of a heart the world hath stung. 
That darts in seeming playfulness around, 
And makes those feel that will not own the wound. 
* « « •» s- « » 

In him inexplicably mixed appeared 

Much to be loved and hated, sought and feared. 

There was in him a vital scorn of all. 

He had (if t'were not nature's boon) an art 
Of fixing memory on another's heart; 
It was not love, perchance, nor hate, nor aught 
That words can image to express the thought; 
But they who saw him did not see in vain, 
And once beheld would ask of him again; 
And those to whom he spake remembered well. 
And on the words, however light, would dwell : 
None knew, nor how, nor why, but he entwined 
Himself perforce around the hearer's mind ; 
There he was stamped, in liking or in hate. 
If greeted once; however brief the date. 
That friendship, pity, or aversion knew. 
Still there within the inmost thought he grew. 
You could not penetrate his soul, but found. 
Despite your wonder, to your own he wound; 
His presence haunted still; and from the breast 
He forced an all-unwilling interest ; 
Vain was the struggle in that mental net, 
His spirit seemed to dare you to forget." 

Soon after Mr. Tyler's election, he vindicated his course be- 
fore a large assemblage of the members of the legislature and of 
citizens at Richmond. He indignantly repelled the charge of 
a lurking treachery, and called witnesses present to prove that 
if he had deceived any one, he had deceived some of his nearest 
'personal friends, who would not have voted against his nomina- 



TEE FOURTH DECADE. 8^ 

tiou if they had not been convinced by himself that he did not 
desire the senatorship. He had bowed simply, as a Democratic 
• Republican should, to the will of the legislature. His fault, if 
any, was that ; and he declared, with pointed significance, that, 
by accepting the appointment, while he interfered with the 
pretensions of no other citizen, he had acquitted himself of a 
sacred obligation. He was under no obligations to Mr. Ran- 
dolph, and was not bound to forego any honor conferred upon 
him in deference to the wishes of his personal friends against 
the wishes of a majority of the legislature. He had formed 
no coalition wiih the party of the administration. On the con- 
trary, all his hopes in the administration of Mr. Adams were 
withered by his "splendid message to Congress." He saw in 
it " an almost total disregard of the federative principle." He 
iterated his honest convictions that " the preservation of the 
federative principles of our government were inseparably con- 
nected with the perpetuation of liberty, and he cared not who 
should assail it, whether personal friend or personal foe, 
whether that or any subsequent administration, he would ever 
be ready to oppose such an attack with feelings of the most 
determined resistance." And in making these pledges, he com- 
bined prediction with promise when he uttered the words which 
he nobly redeemed in his very last days: " TT7«en tlieae handlers 
which now float above us shall be made to lower on the em- 
battled field, then I may abandon the doctrines of our fathers 
and forget my allegiance to the Constitution, but not before.'''' 

How truly and faithfully the burning patriot kept that "oath 
of the altar" we all know. God be praised ! He loved him too 
well not to test his faith by seeing his State banners " flung 
out upon the battle-field," and too well to let him live to see 
those banners lower 1 He was spared the sight of hauling 
down the banners of State sovereignty and hoisting over them 
the ensigns of imperial consolidation! His toast in 1827 was, 
"The Federative System: in its simplicity there is grandeur; 
in its preservation, liljerty ; in its destruction, tyranny !" 

What a truth ! What a prophecy ! What a verification 1 



CHAPTER V. 

THE FOURTH DECADE, FROM 1830 TO 1830. 

"The Monroe Doctrine" — Northwestern Coast of America — The Tariff of 1S28— 
The Election of General Jackson — An Episode and Anecdote. 

The only memorable State measures of Mr. Mouroe's ad- 
ministratioQ were the organization of the War Department by 
Mr. Calhoun, the recognition of the South American republics, 
the assertion of what is called the " Monroe doctrine" of non- 
interference by European powers with the affairs of North and 
South America, and conventions with Great Britain and Russia 
as to the northwestern coasts of America. Each one of these 
subjects has had great influence in controlling the destiny of 
the United States. 

In connection with, and in aid of, his gigantic scheme of in- 
ternal improvements and of the national defense, Mr. Calhoun 
did all in his power, with the assistance of General Bernard, who 
had oome from the wars of Napoleon to introduce and apply 
the polytechnics of France, and to build up the military school 
of West Point. It has had a disastrous effect upon the system 
of the republic. It has studied physics altogether, nothing 
of the Humanities, has been taught servilely to "obey orders 
and break owners," and has finally crushed eleven sovereign 
States of the Union, overborne the Federal Constitution, and, 
for the time, set up the oligarchic supremacy of Congress. First 
came Hassler to survey the coast with his benign theodolite, 
and then came Bernard with his polytechnics to set aside the 
nuixims of Washington, that standing armies are dangerous, 
and that a well-regulated militia is the safe reliance of a repub- 
lic, by the swords and bayonets, shot and shell, grades, titles, 
(90) 



THE FOURTH DECADE. 91 

and high pay of the cadets of West Point. It has proved no 
Pop Emuious argument to make Presidents: 

" Rumpscj', Dumpsey, 
Col. Johusou killed Tecumseh." 

It has become the power of Parliament, and if it must and will 
enthrone a despot, God grant that he may be of the order and 
temper of Cromwell, — no Stuart, no Bourbon. 

At a Grand Assembly held at James City the 10th of October, 
1649, the colony of Virginia, by its first act, declared the decapi- 
tation of Charles the First treason, in denying the divine right 
of kings, and therefore enacted, that to defend the regicides by 
reasoning, discourse, or argument was to be accessory after the 
fact to the death of the king ; that to asperse his memory should 
be punishable at the discretion of the governor (Sir William 
Berkeley) and the council ; thot to doubt the right of succession 
of diaries the Second should be deemed high treason ; and that 
to propose a change of government should be equally high 
treason. 

These were bold declarations, adhering bravely to the Second, 
after the execution of the First, Charles. Yet, notwithstanding 
this worse than outlawry of the Protector, when he sent com- 
missioners to take the "surrender of the countrie" in 1651, 
he set an example by which republicans of the present hour 
may profit, by learning what the Humanities did at that day in 
contrast with what the physical force of this day has done to 
Yirgiuia. 

By " articles at the surrender of the countrie, — Articles agreed 
on, and concluded at, James Cittie, in Virginia, for the sur- 
rendering and settling of that plantation under the obedience 
and government of the Commonwealth of England by the Com- 
missioners of the Council of State, by authority of the Parlia- 
ment of England, and by the Grand Assembly of the Governor, 
Council, and Burgesses of that countrie :" 

First. " It is agreed and consented that the plantation of Vir- 
ginia, and all the inhabitants thereof, shall be and remaine in 
due obedience and subjection to the Commonwealth of England, 



92 SEVEN DECADES OF THE UNION. 

according to the lawes there established. And that this sub- 
mission and subscription be acknowledged a voluntary act, not 
forced v or constrained hy a conquest upon the countrie ; and 
that they shall have and enjoy such freedomes and privileges 
as belong to the free-borne people of England.''^ 

Thirdly. "That there sliall be a full and totale remission and 
indemnities of all acts, words, or writings done or spoken against 
the Parliament of England in relation to the same." 

Fourthly. " That Virginia shall have and enjoy the ancient 
bounds and limits granted by the charters of the former kings." 

Seventhly. Free trade was granted Virginia. 

Eighthly. " That she should be free from all taxes, and none 
to be imposed on her without consent of her Grand Assem- 
bly." ■ 

Tenthly. A year to remove, with their effects, out of Vir- 
ginia was given to all malcontents. 

Eleventhly. The use of the Common Prayer was allowed by 
Cromwell, "provided that those things which relate to kingshipp 
or that government be not used publiquely ; and the continuing 
of ministers in their places, they not misdemeaning themselves." 

These were regularly signed and countersigned, and again 
other articles were agreed on : 

First. " No oaths or engagements to the committee were 
required of the governor and council, and neither to be cen- 
sured for praying for or speaking well of the king." 

Ninthly. " Full indemnity to all persons in as clear terms as 
the learned in the law of arms can express." 

Tenthly. An act of indemnity and oblivion w.as agreed on 
and passed. 

How unlike this to the late Fourteenth Amendment, passed 
by Congress and enforced by West Point ! 

Mr. Monroe declared a doctrine of non-interference by Europe 
which has proved a "brutum fulmen.^'' Where Europe has not 
interfered with American governments, the United States have, 
as with Mexico in the past and with St. Domingo in the pres- 
ent. And they allowed Europe to send an Austrian prince to 
be inaugurated Emperor of Mexico, and then to be deserted by 



THE FOURTH DECADE. 93 

Louis IS'apoleon and to be shot like a felon, without a fault ex- 
cept that of filling a European mission ; and they have allowed 
Eul-ope to interfere in the affairs of the Isthmus to an extent of 
partial control. And the United States, barely recognizing the 
independence of the South American republics, gave them no 
material aid or guarantees, and again and again countenanced 
the interference of Europe in American affairs by themselves 
interfering in the affairs of Europe, as in the case of Greece. 
And we did not stand up to 54° 40' on the northwest coast. 
And here it must be noted that not the least cause of magnify- 
ing the physical and material elements over the Humanities 
has been and is the gold of California. 

Mr. Tyler took his seat in the Senate of the United States 
December 3d, 1827, and continued steadfastly in opposition to 
the coalition of Adams and Clay. He took a conspicuous part 
in the question of the Panama mission, on the odious tariff of 
1828, called the " Bill of Abominations," on the Cumberland 
road bill, and on other minor measures. 

The person/nel of the Opposition was too eminent in ability 
and power to be resisted. The leaders were men of the highest 
attainments, and combined all the factions of Democracy, con- 
sisting of the War party, the State Rights and Strict Construc- 
tion school, the Free Trade and Valley of the Mississippi 
interests, and the Southern interests of slavery. 

Party spirit raged with rancor, and the administration was 
shown no quarter on any subject at issue, and was crushed. 
General Jackson was elected in 1828 by a mojority so over- 
whelming and so pointedly in reproof of "bargain and corrup- 
tion," that it stigmatized Mr. Adams's defeat with ignominy. 
He and Mr. Clay were indignantly hurled out of office, and 
their party of National Republicans was so prostrated as never 
to assume its name again. 

And here the author of these pages must be indulged in an 
episode which connects himself with the great men of this 
narrative and with events of importance in aficr-life. In the 
month of August, 1828, with a law license in hand, we left 
our native Eastern Shore of Yirginia for Baltimore, on our 



94 SEVEN DECADES OF THE UNION. 

way to Nashville to be married and settled for life. "\Ye stopped 
at Tangier Island, in the Chesapeake Bay, there to part with 
kindred and friends who accompanied us to the island, where 
was held the annual camp-meeting of the Methodist Episcopal 
Church. Love and plighted troth urged us to fly with swift 
wings westward, and the "amor locV^ drew us back to " Home 
in Old Yirgiuia." 

Tangier is south of Smith's Island and southeast of the mouth 
of the Potomac. Its southern end was occupied during the war 
of 1812 by the British fleet, under Cockburn, just fifteen miles 
from the eastern main at Chesconessex Creek, where our child- 
hood was spent during the war, and where the morning, noon, 
and evening guns of the red-coated enemy taught us the signals 
of horrid war and made us early familiar wiih dangers. Sand 
redoubts were thrown up on the island, and their faint outlines 
still remain. L'e.'bre war mide tlie island one of its sites, it 
had, from the time of Asbury and Coke, and from a memor- 
able date of persecution of the Methodists on the Eastern 
Shore, been made a place of refuge for their religious worship 
on the occasion of their great annual assemblages in camp- 
meetings. There, upon the bald sands of the beach, ever}' year, 
have the tents of worship, wooden and sail-cloth, been pitched 
by piety, for now three-quarters of a century, to watch and 
pray and preach for weeks at a time, in humiliation and horaoge 
towards God, in the open air of heaven, by the bright waters 
of the grsmdest, loveliest bay of old ocean's salt seas. 

Healthful, refreshing, of clean shores, and abounding in fish- 
eries, the population of cities, towns, and country on both sides 
of the Chesapeake, from the mouth of the Susquehanna to the 
Capes, congregate there at the wonted season of August. It 
is a yearly feast of fruits and fish as well as of "love," and re- 
vivals of health as well as of " spirit." There collect the great 
campaigners of the pulpit, some of the greatest divines and 
elders ; there are fathers and mothers and sons and daughters 
of the Church ; there collect people of the world of every de- 
gree and dignity ; there are hucksters and caterers for the 
" multitude come out to be taught;" there whole families come 



THE FOURTH DECADE. 95 

with household utensils and every appliance which tent can 
afford to table ; some come iu steamers from Baltimore, Annap 
olis, and Cambridge, Maryland, and from Norfolk ar.d Fred- 
ericksburg and other towns in Virginia, and from both sides 
of the bay ; and from every creek come vessels of all sizes, 
schooners, sloops, pungies, cats, canoes, and skiffs, loaded with 
people and provisions, until the island harbors are studded with 
shipping and a forest of masts, which gives the wharves and 
island the appearance of some considerable mart of conuuerce. 
The camp is regularly laid out in large squares, with wide 
streets ; bowers are erected for the pulpit-stands, and for the 
" anxious benches," and broad planks are nailed horizontally 
across the tops of posts for sand whereon to kindle light-wood 
flambeaux to illumine the scenes at night. A police is care- 
fully detailed of saintly watchmen, of pious pith and discretion, 
to keep order and to guard the camp, and the exercises are con- 
ducted under orders duly proclaimed by authority. No Salis- 
bury Fair ever exceeded it in variety of strange scenes, grotesque 
and grave, ludicrous and sad, sacred and sinful, affected and real: 
here a powerful, learned man of God pouring out the word of 
truth in great volume of lungs and labor and love ; there his con- 
trast of a little exhorter; here prayer, and inward groaning of 
spirit struggling openly with conviction; there a loud-mouth 
braying of hymns sung by nasal Stentors of psalmody; here a 
"trance" of mute adoration, and there a cotillon of " chasseing^^ 
shouters, cutting in and out and grasping of brothers' and sis- 
ters' hands in a mazy dance of praise ; here one "down" under 
weight of sin, and there another leaping for "joy" and crying 
out for " glory ;" here a calm and solemn invocation to prayer, 
and there a stirring of anxious mourners ; here a crowd of 
whites worshiping without noise, decently, and there a mass 
of blacks and whites preaching, praying, exhorting, singing, 
shouting, bawling, yelling, up and down, whirling around in 
perfect Bedlam time of " confusion worse confounded ;" here 
the ministers of the Church winning souls away from Satan, and 
there the sous and daughters of vanity sipping the siren draught 
of sensual pleasure in all the ways of wanton delight ; here, at 



96 SEVEN DECADES OF THE UXIOX. 

night, the camp at vest, and all its suburbs drinking, fiddling, 
dancing, and doing worse, uproarious in shameful frolic until 
morning light. 

The night is far spent, and at early dawn the horn is blown. 
The tents rise again to repeat the last day's scenes and exercises, 
and the sinners sink away to sleep until the curtain of the night 
falls again. Whilst goodness is dealing out "grace" at the table 
of the "love-feast," huckster and vender are selling chicken-pies, 
and barbecued, broiled, fried, and boiled fish, ami peaches and 
melons and cautelopes, cider, crabs, and ginger-cakes, June 
apples, lemonade, and ice-cream ; and, if you cannot find re- 
ligion, you may — and if not always on guard, you will — lose 
your purse, for " camp-meetin' time" is always a time for strip- 
ping orchards and robbing hen-roosts, wherewith to make a 
penny to pay for expenses whilst on the lookout for the main 
chances of picking and stealing in the midst of the crowded 
camp and its concomitants. 

An old physician complained to a sister who loved the camp- 
meeting where she had " got glory in her soul," that if he made 
a feast with every viand to tempt indulgence, he, though tem- 
perate himself and abstinent, might well be held responsible 
for all the excesses of his guests. The old lady replied that 
she was not responsible for the concomitants of sin around the 
table of the Lord ; that if all even were to go to the " anxious 
benches" and kneel in sincerity and truth, there especially 
would the Evil One and Tempter be to beguile souls and take 
from them their heavenly food. 

"Well, madam,'' he said, "while you were kneeling at the 
anxious bench, a thief stole my surgical instruments, which had 
been my companions for life, and with which I saved life and 
limb." 

"Ah, doctor, where did you have those implements of pain ? 
Somewhere, perhaps, where they ought not to have been ?" 

" On my honor, madam, — honestly, I was not bush-dodging!" 

There are many salt-water bushes on the higher portions of 
the island off from the beach. The camp of 1828 was most 
numerously attended. We had started in a sail-vessel from a 



THE FOURTH DECADE. 97 

beautiful creek late in the evening-, and when within about two 
miles of the beach the breeze died away, and we were help- 
lessly becalmed. The sun set clear o'er the bay, smooth, ripplc- 
less, like a mirror of the Almighty ; in a few moments the island 
was not to be seen, until the moon effulgent rose o'er the eastern 
land and lighted up the glassy waters, and she had not risen 
high when suddenly the light-wood flambeaux of the camp 
shot forth their beams, and the rows and avenues of hundreds 
of broad and high blazes were like supernatural lamps of the 
heavens; and soon the hymns of the multitude came softly 
stealing by moonlight o'er the mirrored bay, mellowed by dis- 
tance, as if angel-voices were in choirs of melody coming from 
an island cloud ! Oh, it was sweet beyond fancy's dreams I 

We could not but exclaim, " That is the anthem of farewell 
to home and friends! and that is the cloud-music giving wel- 
come to the West and to active life ! Here is a start with good 
omens !" Tears both of joy and grief were wept. This is now 
told in the " sere and yellow leaf," because the memory is still 
refreshing and helps to renew life. 

In a month or more we were at' Nashville, and married the 
daughter of the Reverend Dr. 0. Jennings, the Presbyterian 
pastor of Andrew Jackson, who honored him with tender rever- 
ence and respect. The general tendered his daughter the hos- 
pitalities of the Hermitage, and ordered our attendance there, 
the day after the wedding, to make his house the home of oui 
honey-moon. The marriage was on the 8th of October, and 
our whole wedding-party was punctually at the Hermitage on 
the day appointed. We desired to study General Jackson in 
his slipsliod ways at home. The weather had been wet, and 
the roads were exceedingly bad in that soil of unbroken lime- 
stone. The bridesmaids and groomsmen were on horseback, 
and the bride and groom rode in a gig which had been driven 
all the way from Baltimore, in a travel full of incidents, but 
without a serious accident. Escape from all disasters in a 
travel of eight hundred and fifty miles had made us too confi- 
dent for a drive of only twelve miles, the distance to the Her- 
mitage from Nashville. On the way out we noticed a narrow 

T 



98 SEVEN DECADES OF THE UNION. 

defile of rock and mud-holes on one side, and stumps on the 
MurfreeFborough road on the other side of the track, which re- 
quired a nice eye, good light, a steady rein, and a strong horse^ 
quick to obey every touch of the rein. 

We arrived at the Hermitage to dinner, and were shown to 
a bridal chamber magnificently furnished with articles which 
were the rich and costly presents of the city of New Orleans 
to its noble defender. 

Had we not seen General Jackson before, we would have 
taken him for a visitor, not the host of the mansion. He 
greeted us cordially, and bade us feel at home, but gave us dis- 
tinctly to understand that he took no trouble to look after any 
but his lady guests ; as for the gentlemen, there were the parlor, 
thediniug-room, the library, the sideboard and its refreshments ; 
there were the servants, and, if anything was wanting, all that 
was necessary was to ring. He was as good as his word. He .- 
did not sit at the head of his table, but mingled with his guests,-^ 
and always preferred a seat between two ladies, obviously 
seeking a chair between different ones at various times. 
He was very easy and graceful in his attentions ; free, and 
often playful, but always dignified and earnest, in his con- 
versation. He was quick to perceive every point of Word or 
manner, was gracious in approval, but did not hesitate to dis- 
sent with courtesy when he differed. He obviously bad a 
hidden vein of humor, loved aphorism, and could politely con- 
vey a sense of smart travesty. If put upon his mettle, he was* 
very positive, but gravely respectful. He conversed freely, and 
seemed to be absorbed in attention to what the ladies were 
saying; but if a word of note was uttered at any distance from 
him audibly, he caught it by a quick and pertinent comment, 
without losing or leaving the subject about which he was talk- 
ing to another person, — such was his ease of sociability, without 
levity or lightness of activity, and without being oracular or 
heavy in his remarks. He had great power of attention and 
concentration, without being prying, curt, or brusque. Strong 
good sense and warm kindness of manner put every word of 
his pleasantly and pointedly in its right place. He conversed 



THE FOURTH DECADE. 99 

wonderfully well, but at times pronounced incorrectly and mis- 
used words ; and it was remarkable, too, that when he did so 
it was with emphasis on the error of speech, and he would 
give it a marked prominence in diction. 

To illustrate him in a scene : The Hermitage house was a 
solid, plain, substantial, commodious country mansion, built of 
brick, and two stories high. The front was south. You entered 
through a porch, a spacious hall, in which the stairs ascended, 
airy and well lighted. It contained four rooms on the lower 
floor, each entering the passage and each on either side opening 
into the.onie adjoining. "The northwest room was the dining- 
room, the southeast and southwest rooms were sitting-rooms, and 
the northeast room had a door entering into the garden. The 
house was full of guests. There were visitors from all parts 
of the United States, numbering from twenty to fifty a day, 
constantly coming and going, all made welcome, and all well 
attended to. 

The cost of the. coming Presidency was even then very great 
and burdensome ; but the general showed no signs of impa- 
tience, and was alive and active in his attentions to all comers 
and goers. He affected no style, and put on no airs of greatness, 
but was plainly and simply, though impulsively, polite to all. 
Besides his own family he had his wife's relatives, Mr. Stokely 
and Andrew J. Donelson, around him every day, and his 
adopted son, Andrew Jackson, relieved him of all the minuter 
attentions to guests. 

Henry Lee, of Virginia, was, we may say, resident for the 
time with him, as he was engaged in writing for his election 
some of the finest canipj,ign ..pjipers ever penned in this coun- 
try. One of Lee's fugitive pieces, on the death of an Indian 
youth, the son of a chief who was killed at the battle of the 
Horse-Shoe, whom the general had taken as godson, an orphan 
of one of his victories, is a precious pearl of poetry in prose. 

He was not handsome as his half-brother, General Robert E. 
Lee, but rather ugly in face, — a mouth without a line of the 
bow of Diana about it, and nose not cut clean and classic, but 
rather meaty and, if we may make a word, "blood-beety ;" but 



100 SEVEN DECADES OF THE UNION. 

he was one of the most attractive men in conversation we ever 
listened to. Alas ! alas ! that such a man, so gifted, should 
have had to write as he did, long afterwards, from Paris, where 
he was not allowed to be consul, that "everything had turned 
to the bitterness of ashes on his taste." He, Harry Lee, who 
was so severe upon Mr. Jefferson and his writings because 
of his " Arcana" about his father, Light-Horse Harry Lee of 
the Revolution, was then, in fact, the entertaining host of the 
Hermitage, and attracted the crowd of visitors around his glow- 
ing words of commentary on the election. 

The first or second evening of our stay, Mr. Lee had drawn 
around him his usual crowd of listeners ; but we were the more 
special guests of Mrs. Jackson. She was a descendant of Col- 
onel Charles Stokely, of our native county, Accomack, Virginia, 
and we had often seen his old mansion, an old Hanoverian hip- 
roofed house, standing on the seaside, not far above Metompkin ; 
and she had often heai'd her mother talk of the old Assawaman 
Church, not very far above Colonel Stokely 's house, pulled down 
long before our day, endowed with its silver communion-service 
by our great-grandfather, George Douglas, Esq., of Assawaman. 
Thus she was not only a good Presbyterian, whose pastor's 
daughter was the bride, and she a Presbyterian too, but the 
groom was from the county of her ancestors, in Virginia, and 
could tell her something about traditions she had heard of the 
family from which she sprung. With pious devotion to her 
mother's family, she desired to have a talk with us particularly, 
and formed a cosy group of quiet chat in the northeast corner 
room leading to the garden. The room had a north window, 
diagonal from the door leading to the garden. At this door her 
group was formed, fronting, in a semicircle, this north window 
of the room, the garden door on our right. First, on our right, 
next the window, was old Judge Overton, one of General Jack- 
son's earliest and best friends. He was a man who had made 
his mark in law and politics, but was not pious, and was a 
queer-looking little old man. Small in stature, and cut into 
sharp angles at every salient point, a round, prominent, gourd- 
like, bald cranium, a peaked, Roman nose, a prominent, sharp, 



THE FOURTH DECADE. 101 

but manly chin, and he had lost his teeth and swallowed his 
lips. " There was danger," as Mr. Philip Doddridge once said 
of his own nose and chin, " of their coming together, for many 
sharp words had passed between them 1" Next to him, on his 
left, sat General Jackson, his hair always standing straight up 
and out, but he in his mildest mood of social suavity ; on his 
left the Reverend Dr. Jennings, one of the sweetest men in 
society, very distinguished as a lawyer first, and then as a 
divine, with a rare sense of humor which even his religious zeal 
could not always repress, and yet awfully earnest and severe 
against all levity; on his left was Mrs. Jackson, a lady who, 
doubtless, was once a form of rotund and rubicund beauty, but 
now was very plethoric and obese, and seemingly suffered 
from what was called phthisis, and talked low but quick, with 
a short and wheezing breath, the very personation of affable 
kindness and of a welcome as sincere and truthful as it was 
simple and tender ; on her left was ourself, responding to her 
every inquiry about things her mother had handed down con- 
cerning the Stokely family. On our left sat Henry Baldwin, 
the son of Judge Baldwin, of the Supreme Court of the United 
States, one of the groomsmen, a gentleman of fine culture, good 

sense, and taste ; and on his left was sweet Mary , one 

of the bridesmaids. Thus the dramatis personse sat in the 
scene. 

Judge Overton had thrown over his head a bandanna hand- 
kerchief, and sat all the time muttering or "raounching, mounch- 
ing, mounching" on his toothless gums, looking like the Witch 
of Endor. His profile, to the eye, cut its outline clear upon 
the window-pane. He and General Jackson and Dr. Jennings, 
at first, were talking on the topics of the day. Mr. Baldwin 

was whispering to Mary , and Mrs. Jackson was for an 

hour or two questioning us about her people and their place in 
Accomack. We had just described to her, as nearly as we could 
recollect, one of the goblets of the plain plate of Assawamau 
Church, the only piece of it we had seen, in the house of a 
maternal great-uncle, when suddenly she seemed satisfied, or 
the subject was exhausted, and she turned to Dr. Jennings, 



102 SEVEN DECADES OF THE UNION: 

soying, "Doctor, a short time ago I came near sending for you 
on a very important concern to me." 

"Indeed, madam 1 I should have been pleased to obey your 
call, and, duty permitting, would have come with pleasure to 
serve you in any way I could. Pray, what was the occasion ? 
Perhaps, if permitted, I may still render you a service." 

" Oh, doctor ! at a time lately, but for a moment, I feared the 
general was giving way to the Swedenborgian doctrines. I 
wished you to talk to him on the subject and to counsel me." 

We looked at the general and closely watched his expression. 
His eye was soft whenever he looked at his cherished wife ; and 
raising himself a little in the attitude of surprise, until he un- 
derstood her sudden allusion to himself, but calm and composed, 
be said, — 

" Pooh, pooh, madam 1 your anxiety was vain. I was in no 
danger of giving way to iho Swedenborgian doctrines; all I 
said was that some of Swedenborg's conceptions of Deity were 
the most soo-blime [pronouncing sublime as if spelt " soo,^^ 
and emphasizing the first syllable] that tapped the drum eccle- 
siastic." 

"What!" exclaimed the doctor of divinity, "do you pre- 
tend to compare the crudities of Swedenborg with the divine 
conceptions of David, or Job, or Isaiah ?" 

" Yes," said the hero, for he had said it, and his whole mien 
changed to one of pious pugnacity. " Yes, sir, Swedenborg's 
conceptions, by being among the most sooblime, only prove . 
that the Almighty Creator has at all times, among all nations, 
inspired the souls of men with images of Himself, and the 
original inspirations are in some instances as sooblime as are 
the revelations of divinity: both come from God." 

His positiveness appeared in his flashing eye, his erect form, 
his hair standing up and out, in his compressed lips, and in his 
upraised gesture with hand clinched. There then was a theo- 
logical fight. It was exactly what we wanted to see : had he 
logic and metaphysics in him ? The discussion which ensued 
was rich and rare. It was the scimitar of Saladin against the 
battle-axe of Coeur de Lion ! The doctor exact, a fencer poised, 



THE FOURTH DECADE. 103 

quick, steady, skilled, with weapons keen enough to cut eider- 
down ; he would seem to run in the Damascus blade and turn 
the point coolly to feel for the vital point, but Richard did 
not fall nor faint, but thrashed about him with his massive 
axe as a harvest-man would wield the flail ! It was sharp 
science against a strong arm which wanted not natural 
'' canning." 

Both forgot the witnesses of the single-handed struggle, and 
were too busy in the tight try of argument to notice any inter- 
polations of the listeners and lookers-on. 

The Witch of Endor was not silent in the fray : "mumble, 
mumble, mumble" went his chin and nose, and, catching his 
own argument between two fingers and his thumb, he would 
try to push it in, but it always failed to enter the list, and. 
stuck in the palm of his hand, he each time starting to say with 
a vim, " By G — d !" but turning that insult to the divine pres- 
ent into the words, "By G — Jupiter!" It was ludicrous, and 
we nearly clapped our hands with the " gaudia certaminis,^' 
when suddenly Mrs. Jackson reached across our knees, and 
touched Mr. Baldwin, saying, "Mr. Baldwin, dear, you are 
sleepy!" The startled groomsman, broken down by his wait- 
ing on matrimony for two or three nights, suddenly opened his 
eyes from a nod, and rubbing them with his knuckles, protested 
that he was not at all sleepy, but wide awake and enjoying the 
discussion 1 His protestations were all in vain. Up Mrs. 
Jackson would rise and ring the bell for servant and candle to 
light the dear child to bed ! This broke the discussion and 
separated the coterie for the night. As we rose to leave the 
room, Dr. Jennings touched me and said, sotto voce, " Henry,' 
did you hear that poor old sinner turn ' By God' into 'By 
Jupiter'?" "Yes, and it touched me as it did you, doctor; 
not only to shock my piety, but to shake my risibles." 
, After several days of delightful delay, we moved to leave the 
Hermitage, but day after day were detained by the entreaty 
of General Jackson and his lady. At last we were resolved 
positively to start; still, we were not allowed to leave until 
after dinner, and the hour for dining was as late as 4 P.-'^i. 



104 SEVEN DECADES OF THE UNION. 

We apprehended anxiously the danger of the defile of stumps 
and mud-holes on the Murfreesborough road, on the way back 
to Nashville. The road then was not paved, and it would cer- 
tainly be dark when we arrived at the point of danger. We 
urged this necessity for early departure, but in vain. After 
dinner the general insisted it was too late, but ordered the 
horses, and whilst awaiting their being brought to the door, he 
took his pipe, sat on the sill of the front door, and with a group 
in the porch around him, consisting of several of the family and ■' 
guests, repeatedly warned us that it would be dark before we 
could travel half the way, that the road was unsafe, and that 
we would certainly meet with disaster. This led to tales by 
one and another of the group of "hairbreadth 'scapes." In 
every instance narrated of disaster we noticed that he point- 
edly and oracularly said, "Ah ! young man, you did not trust 
in Providence." This was repeatedly said, adding, "Never 
encounter danger if you can avoid it : if inevitable, meet it 
more than half-way ; but whether to avoid or encounter it, trust 
altogether iu Providence." We were struck by his repeated 
remarks of this sort, so much so that we could not but think, 
" Is this real faith, or is it not like an affected Napoleonic 
belief and trust in Fate ?" 

The gig came up to the door. He rose to wait on the bride ; 
and in banding her up the step, he said to her, " I have tried 
my best to protect you, madam, but your chosen one seems too 
self-reliant to heed your safety or my admonitions ; I fear he 
don't trust in Providence, and will meet with disaster on the 
way. I shall be anxious until I meet you at church, safe in 
Nashville, Sabbath next. Trust in Providence, and you will' 
not be hurt; and you have a goodly escort to help you in time 
of need. May Providence protect you 1 — it seems your husband 
thinks he can protect himself." 

We drove off, and hurried on faster than the saddle-horses 
traveled, in order to reach the " stumps and holes" before dark; 
but darkness overtook us ; and, on approaching the place, the 
road was scrutinized ; we drove slowly and steadily, but vision 
was perfectly deceived. The wagon-wheels, daubed with the 



THE FOURTH DECADE. 105 

mortar of stiff clay, had to pass so close to an inclined stump 
that the dripping mud had fallen on the stump and colored it 
precisely lilie the bed of the road and the offal of the stump on 
the opposite side of the road looked black, and was taken for the 
stump itself; and this led the left wheel directly up and over it, 
overturning the gig to the right in the mortar of clay in the road. 
The horse was a generous lion of draught, and, though spirited, 
perfectly broken. The right shaft was broken, and the fragments 
pricked his right hind leg and made him restive ; but we re- 
mained perfectly still, steadily grasping the reins until the bride 
could creep out into the road, and then, gradually relaxing the 
rein, we too crawled into the mud. The breeching and traces 
were immediately undone and slipped out, and we found a dry 
spot of leaves on the roadside to stand on. So far was the bride 
from being put out or frightened, that she joined in the propo- 
sition to tie the horse in the woods and bide ourselves behind 
a large tree until the cavalcade escort should come up. In a 
short time they arrived at the spot, and, finding the gig upset 
and broken in the road, and no sign of the horse, or harness, or 
ourselves, they set up a wail of agony most distressing. Dr. 
Thomas R. Jennings was so shocked that we could conceal 
ourselves no longer, but ran out and relieved the party. For- 
tunately a four-horse wagon soon drove up, and the driver 
having an axe and other tools with which to cut a pole and 
straps to lash on the broken shaft, it. was repaired, and we 
reached Nashville safe, but very muddy, in the wedding fine 
clothes. 

The next Sabbath General Jackson and his lady came into 
Mr. John C. McLemore's, and, calling at the house of Dr. 
Jennings, at once inquired for our safety ; when told of our 
"escape" from hurt, again he repeated, "Ah 1 young man, you 
did not trust in Providence 1 You would not be advised to 
avoid danger when you could. But for your trusting wife, it 
would have been worse for both." 

We then began to perceive what he meant by trusting in 
Providence. It was no inactive belief, no blind faith ; but 
it was to do what was prudent, careful, and obviously most 



106 SEVEN DECADES OF THE UNION. 

safe, and leave the " whole care" of the result to God. It was 
to do every little thing necessary to be observed by human 
foresight and precaution, however inapt, apparently, to the 
end, as the mother of Moses did with the preparation of bul- 
rushes and slime and pitch, and then put the basket on the 
waters, however much exposed to the crocodile and the Nile, and 
leave the whole care for conjunction of causes and effects to the 
goodness and wisdom of God ! Contrary to the general opinion 
of strangers concerning him, Jackson was an abundantly cautious 
man, and yet his exquisite tact often imposed upon the world 
by what he called "the policy of rashness," — of doing what 
would be least expected of him under the circumstances by his 
enemies, — violating general rules to obtain the advantage of 
surprise. That, as well, was the very cunning of caution. 

We heard numberless anecdotes of him illustrating the same . 
characteristic of consummate tact. He knew that the world, 
or those who knew him least, counted him of a temperament 
weak, impassioned, impulsive, and inconsiderate in action; and 
he often turned this mistake as to his character into a large 
capital of advantage. He was a consummate actor, never / 
stepped without knowing and marking his ground, but knew / 
that most men thought he was not a man of calculations. This 
enabled him to blind them by his affectation of passion and im- 
pulse, and neither Talma, nor Garrick, nor Kemble, nor Kean 
could excel him in the " histrionics." Frequently, when strangers 
thought he was in a towering passion, his whole excitement was 
deliberately simulated for effect. For example, when bank com- 
mittees would come from Philadelphia or elsewhere to over- 
whelm him with memorials upon the removal of the deposits, 
and to represent the crash of commercial credit by his anti-bank 
policy, he was fixed in his plans, and knew that they could not 
change his purpose, and that he could argue and remonstrate with 
them only in vain ; and he would lay down his pipe, rise to his 
full height of stature and voice, and seem to foam at the mouth 
whilst declaiming vehemently against the dangers of a money 
monopoly : " Yes, he had rather be in the desert of Sahara, 
dying of thirst, than drink from such a fountain of corruption 1" 



THE FOURTH DECADE. 107 

The committees would retire iu disgust, thinkiug they were 
leaving a madman, and as soon as they were gone he would 
resume his pipe, and, chuckling, say, " Tliey thought I was 
mad !" and coolly comment on the policy of " never compro- 
mising a vital issue; one alwa^'S lost friends and never ap- 
peased enemies." He was often derided for want of learning. 
He had read very few books, and he made his supposed igno- 
rance an instrument of policy. To illustrate this: General Call 
and the Honorable Joseph L. White were rivals from Florida 
for his favor. White wanted a foreign mission. Call was one 
of the " braves" of the general's campaigns, and White was an 
accomplished scholar, lawyer, and courtier, but not of that tone 
which stamped a man with General Jackson. White was far the 
fitter of the two for diplomatic life ; but General Jackson pre- 
ferred sturdier stuff than mere manners and cultivation. He 
wished not to oifend White, but was in favor of a pet comrade 
in arms, whose sense and courage he had tried. The delay of 
preference between them was long. At last an incident occurred 
which assured White that the beam Avould kick in his favor. 
The true boundary between Florida and Louisiana had long 
been hidden iu a secret treaty between France and Spain. 
Both territories had been ceded to the United States, but the 
limits had not been accurately defined, and were so uncertain 
that numerous disputes as to land-titles had arisen on the bor- 
ders of the State and Territory. To settle the line, and ascer- 
tain precisely where the French and where the Spanish laws 
furnished the rule of land-titles, a large fee was raised by the 
proprietors and claimants to send Mr. White to Europe to 
obtain the clause relating to boundary embraced in the secret 
treaty. The fee was deposited with Barings, at London, to be 
paid to Mr. White whenever he presented the copy of the clause 
of the secret treaty as to the boundary. Mr. White made due 
preparation, and among other credentials took letters to Lord 
Palmerston. He was received kindly by him, and told him his 
mission. He desired a favorable presentation to Prince Talley- 
rand, then envoy from France at the Court of St. James. Lord 
Palmerston told him that the most he could do was to give him 



108 SEVEN DECADES OF THE UNION. 

opportunity with the prince. He would give a dinner, and 
place Mr. White's seat next to that of Prince Talleyrand, and he 
must then watch his chances and make his own approaches. 
There was no telling what tact to observe or what artifice to 
employ to obtain the patronage of Prince Talleyrand. The 
dinner-hour came, and White found his card on the plate next 
to that of the prince at table. During the dinner the prince 
questioned minutely on many American matters, and White was 
so obliging and satisfactory that the prince was caught in the 
humor to admit the opening of his budget. 

" Yes, the boundaries between the French and Spanish terri- 
tories had been fixed by a certain treaty which was secret ; but 
that clause was no secret, and could be had at his order, and 
he would write for it to be copied in form, with a voucher to 
its being all cognate to the boundary." 

Thus in a few days it was obtained under the proper seals 
and vouchers, and being placed in White's hands by Talleyrand, 
it was presented to the Barings, and White's fee for obtaining 
it was cashed by them. He immediately prepared for a conti- 
nental tour. He purchased a rich English equipage, a "little 
moving England" of a coach, and a traveling " turn-out" of 
" bloods" for the route from Paris to Rome and Naples. He 
was " passported" and " couriered" as " the Hon. Jos. L, 
White, a Delegate in the House of Representatives, of the Con- 
gress of the United States of America, from Florida," and pro- 
gressed in state grandly until he came into some one of the 
little states of Italy, when and where he was suddenly sum- 
moned to appear before his Highness the Prince. Aba! what 
had he done, omitted, said ? Why summoned ? Had he 
uttered aught against the Pope ? Was he suspected ? Of 
what ? 

Obeying the summons thus in doubt and distrust, what was 
his relief when he found himself received most graciously 1 He 
was " the Hon. Jos. L. White, a Delegate, etc. etc. etc., was 
he?" "Yes." Well, the duties of the Italian state had lately 
been changed so favorably to the commerce of the United 
States, and the port regulations so mitigated, that the prince 



THE FOURTH DECADE. 109 

was anxious to communicate intelligence thereof to the Presi- 
dent of the United States, but he regretted that his Highness 
had no diplomatic correspondence or intercourse with Washing- 
ton, and would the Hon. White, thus opportunely passing 
through his dominions, take dispatches to his Excellency 
General Jackson, the President of the United States? 

Certainly, the Hon. Mr. White would do himself that honor, 
and wait on the prince at his pleasure. A messenger was 
called, and took memoranda of orders for the proper dispatches. 
He retired, when the prince seized his silver bell, and ringing 
to recall the messenger, said to the Hon. Mr. White, " We have 
not inquii'ed in what language the dispatches shall be written. 
Which language, the Italian or French, does the President read 
or understand best ?" 

The President read or understood neither ; and with true 
diplomatic tact, White replied, " The one as well as the other, 
your Highness." The dispatches were then made out and 
given with many gracious thanks to the bearer, Mr. White. 
Mr. White was still more thankful for them. He was then, by 
accident, a diplomatic bearer of good news to General Jackson, 
and had beaten a Caulaiucourt by his ready safeguard of Gen- 
eral Jackson as a linguist. 

If Jackson was a Napoleon, he would be made an envoy for 
that smart. Machiavellian answer. 

He guarded the dispatches of the prince with the tenderest 
care, and when he got to Washington City, put on his best 
European costume, and waited on Old Hickory. He told his 
story of the travel and summons and alarm and relief, and all 
went smoothly until he came to what he imagined would be 
*' la creine de la creme^' of the adventure for the general. 
Without lying, he had not admitted that the President did not 
understand any but his own mother tongue of English, and had 
truthfully conveyed the meaning that as to the French or Italian 
he understood "the one as well as the other!" 

The moment this was uttered, the general rose in his wrath, 
and let the Honorable Mr. White know " that he did not 
thank him for any such liberty with his name ; he had sup- 



110 SEV£X JjECADES OF TUB UN I OX. 

pressed the truth, and he would let him know and feel that he 
/ estimated himself as highly as if he read and spoke all the 
I barbarous tongues. His name and character needed no such 
bolster of deception !" 

This was what the court" circle, who saw him only super- 
ficially, supposed was the weakness of pride and vanity and 
ignorance. Not so : he was going to prefer Call, and this was 
an opportunity to make a pretext for cutting White. It was 
cunning, not weakness; and, after White left, he laughed at the 
opportunity to make him quit courting for a diplomatic place. 
White thought it was weakness. 

But, on another occasion, his ignorance of language did en- 
tangle him in a ridiculous mistake, and almost in a scrape. 
During his administration, whilst Mr. Louis McLane, of Dela- 
ware, was Secretary of State, France sent a certain dashing 
minister to Washington, a young man just elevated above the 
grade of charge, whose passion was display. His outfit of 
equipage, grooms, postilions, and gold lace was magnificent. 
He called on the Secretary of State to appoint an audience 
with the President ; and Mr. McLane, an accomplished, easy 
gentleman, begged him to call the next morning at ten o'clock 
at the State office, and he would accompany and present him 
to the President. 

Monsieur le Miuistre mistook as to the place of calling. He 
thought he was to call at the President's mansion at ten o'clock 
A.M. Accordingly, in full panoply of costume, in coach and- 
four, with attendants, grooms, postilions, outriders, and foot- 
men, at the hour appointed he drove up to the front door of the 
White House, instead of to the State Department, where Mr. 
McLane was awaiting his arrival. 

At that time the President was served by a French cook, 
and the celebrated Irishman, Jemmy O'Neal, was General 
Jackson's petted major-domo. The hour was about the time 
of General Jackson's finishing puff of the pipe after breakfast, 
and he smoked, as he did everything else, with all his might ! 
His mode was no Latakia curl, no dreamy, thready line, 
from barely-opened lips ; but a full drawing and expanding 



THE FOURTH DECADE. HI 

volume of white cloud, rising up whiff after whiff, puff after 
puff, and bowl and stem and pipe all smoked as hard and fast 
as they could, and the fire was red and the ashes hot, and 
the whole room was so obfuscated that one could hardly breathe 
its atmosphere or see. His usual mode of sitting while smok- 
ing was with his left leg thrown across the right, and the left 
toe brought behind the right tendo-Achillis, and the long pipe- 
stem resting in the fork or crotch of the two knees, and reach- 
ing nearly to the floor. He smoked the old Powhatan bowl, 
with reed stem very long. In this attitude he was sitting 
and smoking, whilst Mr. McLane was waiting at the State 
office for Mr. Minister, and whilst Mr. Minister was riding up 
to the presidential mansion. He arrived, — the French cook in 
the kitchen. Jemmy O'Neal about his business, and General 
Jackson alone iu his office. A bustle was made, bells began to 
ring. Jemmy was summoned to the door, and there presented 
itself all this parade. The divil a word could Jemmy under- 
stand, , and the best he could do was to run up-stairs to the 
general and announce somebody very grand ; but Jemmy 
winked that all didn't seem right, as there seemed too much 
fuss for that soon in the morning, and it might be, after all, 
an imposition : — " Och, there was no telling about the thing, 
it was so unusual !" It might turn out what afterwards oc- 
curred, — a LaAvrence affair! The general quietly replied, " Oh, 
Jemmy, show the stranger up, — we will see who it is." Jemmy 
ran, and Jackson sat smoking, when presently the room-door 
was thrown wide open, and a manikin of gold-lace entered, 
cocked hat, with -bullion and white feather, flourished in hand, 
making a salaam to the right and a salaam to the left with 
tremendous sweeps, whizzing and whirring French with vehe- 
ment gesture, and approaching nearer and nearer ; it seemed 
threatening in the extreme ! 

The Presidenit quit smoking, beat the bowl of his pipe in his 
hand, rose quickly, took hold of the back of his chair, and 
exclaimed, with strong voice, " By the eternal gods. Jemmy 
O'Neal, who is this ?" 

Jemmy, with eyes and ears open, and hands ready, was 



112 SEVEX DECADES OF THE UNION. 

amazedly looking on, when, fortunately, he bethought him of 
the French cook, and ran for him. There was no time tc be 
lost : so the French cook, with his shirt-sleeves rolled up to 
his shoulders, and just as he was, besprinkled white with flour, 
ran up with Jemmy, arriving just in time to save Mr. Minister's 
pate from being smashed by the chair in General Jackson's hands. 
"]Mon Dieu !" exclaimed the cook: "it is the grand minister 
of Louis Philippe I" 

* " Oh !" said the general : "walk in, sir; there is no ceremony 
here!" And he was about taking the minister by both hands 
just as Mr. McLane entered to see the mistake, to witness the 
prevention of the catastrophe, and to enjoy the joke, which made 
him a thousand times afterwards "shake" with jollity "like a 
bowlful of jelly." 

But we are anticipating events by painting, perhaps out of 
place, the private characteristics and traits of a very gi'eat man, 
whose name belongs only incidentally to this memoir of one of 
his successors. General Jackson was elected President in the 
fall of 1828. His domestic life had been scanned and scourged, 
and his beloved and honored wife had been most malignantly 
reviled and tortured, by the forked tongues of his political oppo- 
nents. She was happy in his love, and never aspired to the 
splendor of his fortune in life. ~ She had fled to his manhood for 
protection and peace, and had been sheltered and saved by his 
gallant championship of the cause of woman. He, and he alone, 
was her all, and of him it may be truly said that, in respect to 
" wassail, wine, and woman," he was one of the purest men of 
his day, and that, too, in an age of rude habits and vulgar dis- 
sipation among the rough settlers of the West. He was tem- 
perate in drink, abstemious in diet, simple in tastes, polished in 
manners, except when roused, and always preferred the society 
of ladies, with the most romantic, pure, and poetic devotion. 
He was never accused of indulging in any of the grosser vices, 
except that in early life he swore, horse-raced, and attended 
cock-fights. As for the wife of his bosom, she was a woman of 
spotless character, and an unassuming, consistent Christian : 
yet political rancor bitterly assailed her, and, not content with 



THE FOURTH DECADE. 113 

defamation, endeavored to belittle her hj the contemptuous 
appellation of " Aunt Rachel," and held her up to ridicule for 
"smoking a corn-cob pipe." She did prefer that form, not for 
the pleasure of smoking, but because a pipe was prescril)ed by 
her physician for her phthisis ; and she often rose in the night 
to smoke for relief. In a night of December, 1828, she rose to 
smoke, and caught cold whilst sitting in her nightclothes ; and 
the story is that her system had been shocked by her over- 
hearing reproaches of herself whilst waiting in a parlor at the 
Nashville Inn. She had said to a friend, upon the election of 
her husband, "For Mr. Jackson's sake, I am glad ; for my own 
part, I never wished it. I assure you I had rather be a door- 
keeper in the house of my God than to live in that palace in 
Washington." She was not allowed to live "in that palace 
in Washington." Before the day of her husband's inauguration 
at the White House she was taken by her God to that " house 
not made with hands, eternal in the heavens." 

The 23d of December was the anniversary of General Jack- 
son's greatest strategy in war. He had without means made 
preparations for the defense of New Orleans. He had arrested 
suspected persons by a strong arm ; he had roused the populace 
of the city, of all races and colors, to seize arms for defense ; 
he had seized cotton bales to make him a line of impenetrable 
ramparts from river to lagoon for miles; he had manned gun- 
boats to co-operate with the land forces ; he had done wonder's 
in making strongholds out of nothing for the last ditches of 
defense ; but the coup de viain was, after making his last 
hold as strong as he could, in leaving his intrenchments to 
attack the invading foe in full force at night, with a handful of 
men, under Coffee and Carroll, on the night of the 23d of De- 
cember, and striking the enemy so hard a blow full in the face that 
he was staggered and made to hesitate and pause, giving Jack- 
son sixteen days' time to recruit his forces and strengthen still 
more his defenses. Had the enemy marched directly upon 
New Orleans on the 2.3d or 24th of December, the " beauty 
and booty" of the city would have fallen a pre}'- to his lust 
and rapine. But Jackson pursued his "policy of rashness," 

8 



lU SEVEN DECADES OF THE UNION. 

struck unexpected and unseen, saved the city, and won im« 
mortal laurels. 

This, tlie 23d of December, 1814, not the 8th of January, 
1815, he counted his day of victory. Strategy was the success- 
ful forerunner of courage and force. 

Preparations were being made in Nashville to give him and 
his lady a grand reception and celebration of the anniversary 
of this his lucky day, and all eyes were bent towards the Her- 
mitage to see the conquering hero, the then President, come, 
with his cherished wife at his side, when, lo ! a messenger on 
" tlie White Horse" was seen, riding fast, to announce that his 
partner was — dead. She was no longer the afflicted, deserted 
one, whom he had championed and married and lived with in 
holy and lawful wedlock. She was no longer his angel bosom 
partner ; she was no longer a target for this world's fiery darts 
of detraction, — she was a saint. The day's gladness was turned 
to earthly mourning, and the day of the. funeral came instead 
of the day of feasting. 

Dr. Heiskel, of Winchester, Virginia, was just starting as a 
young physician in the neighborhood of the Hermitage, and 
was the first to minister to her relief, and attended until two 
eminent physicians were called in from Nashville. From him 
we learned that she had caught cold, and pleuritic symptoms 
supervened upon her constitutional nervous affections. She 
was sitting smoking her corn-cob pipe when she caught her 
last malady. 

The day of burial came, and we witnessed the solemn scene. 
This we can confidently testify, that more sincere homage was 
done to her dead than was ever done to any woman in our day 
and country living. Thousands from the city and from all 
the country around flocked to her funeral. The poor white 
people, the slaves of the Hermitage and adjoining plantations, 
and the neighbors, crowded off the gentry of town and coun- 
try, and filled the large garden in which the interment touk 
place. /She had been a Hannah and Dorcas to every needy 
household. She had been more than mistress, a mother to her 
servants and dependents ; and the richest and best were proud 



THE FOURTH DECADE. 115 

of the privilege of her sincere and simple friendship. She was, 
without question, loved and honored by hig-h and low, white and 
black, bond and free, rich and poor, and that love was so unaflfect- 
edlj expressed by a wail so loud and long that there was no 
mistaking its grief for the loss, not of the departed one, but of 
the living left behind her. From that same door of the northeast 
room of the house near which the happy bridal party sat but 
a few months before, her coffin was borne to the grave dug in 
the garden for her remains. 

Following the pall-bearers came General Jackson, with his 
left hand in the arm of General Carroll, holding his cane in his 
right hand, not grasping it with the hand over the head, nor 
with the thumb up, but with the back of the hand up and hold- 
ing the point of the cane forward as he would have held a 
sword, and where he stopped at the pile of clay its point rested 
on the clods. Weeping and mourning were heard on every 
side ; but at that moment of his coming up to that clod portal 
of clay a favorite old servant of Mrs. Jackson burst through 
the group around the pit and tried to get into the grave with 
the coffin. She was about sixty years of age, but robust and 
strong, and, falling near the brink, got both feet over the edge 
of the grave, when the sexton and others took hold of her and 
prevented her descending, and were trying to raise her up and 
remove her. Her cries were agonizing: "My mistress, my 
best friend, ray love, my life, is gone, — I will go with her!" 

This was but a moment; but, close to General Jackson, we 
watched him intently. Every muscle of his face was unmoved ; 
steady as a rock, without a teardrop in his eye or a quaver 
in his voice, he quickly raised the point of his cane and 
said, " Let that faithful servant weep for her best friend and 
loved mistress ; she has the right and cause to mourn for her 
loss, and her grief is sweet to me." The persons who had hold 
of her immediately released her, and left her sitting over the fresh 
clods, weeping ; and there she remained, hindering the burial, 
until after awhile some of her friends persuaded her to leave 
the side of the grave and let the ceremony go on. The body 
was let down, " dust to dust" was said, the grave was filled up 



116 SEVEN DECADES OF THE UNION. 

and shaped into the common mound which covers poor mor- 
tality, and General Jackson was led away by General Car- 
roll back to the northeast room. The crowd followed, and we 
got in near to the chief mourner. Arriving fairly into the room, 
and pausing a few moments, he looked around him, and, raising 
his voice, said, — 

" Friends and neighbors, I thank you for the honor you have 
done to the sainted one whose remains now repose in yonder 
grave. She is now in the bliss of heaven, and I know that she 
can suffer here no more on earth. That is enough for my con- 
solation ; my loss is her gain. But I am left without her to 
encounter the trials of life alone. I am now the President elect 
of the United States, and in a short time must take my way to 
the metropolis of my country; and, if it had been God's will, I 
would have been grateful for the privilege of taking her to my 
post of honor and seating her by my side; but Providence kaew 
what was best for her. For myself, I bow to God's will, and 
go alone to the place of new and arduous duties, and I shall 
not go without friends to reward, and I pray God that I may 
not be allowed to have enemies to punish. I can forgive all 
who have wronged me, but will have fervently to pray that I 
may have grace to enable me to forget or forgive any enemy 
who has ever maligned that blessed one who is now safe from 
all suflering and sorrow, whom they tried to put to shame for 
my sake ! " 

This was uttered calmly, firmly, mournfully, and in such 
deep silence of the crowd that it was audible and distinct to 
every one in the room. We can never forget it. Could he ? 
The answer to the question illustrates his leading trait of the 
policy of pugnacity. 

In due time he went to Washington City, and was inau- 
gurated President of the United States. He took up his abode 
in the White House. His bed was placed in the appropriate 
chamber. Prominent on the walls of that chamber, right 
opposite the pillow of the bed, was hung a picture of his wife, — 
placed there, as he himself said, so that it might be the first 
object to meet his eye when his lids opened in the morning, 



THE FOURTH DECADE. IH 

and the last for bis gaze to leave when they closed in sleep at 
night. 

And yet, soon after he was a lodger there, that room was 
the scene of his private conferences at night, in which Amos 
Kendall was his chief scribe and amanuensis, to write the broad- 
side editorials of the Globe under his dictation and instruction, 
but not with his diction. He was a better thinker than his 
scribe, his scribe a better writer than he. He would lie down 
and smoke and dictate his ideas as well as he could express 
them, and Amos Kendall would write a paragraph and read it. 
That was not the thing; many times the scribe would write 
and rewrite again and again, and fail to " fetch a compass" of 
the meaning. At last, by alteration and correction, getting 
nearer and nearer to it, he would see it, and be himself aston- 
ished at its masterly power. General Jackson needed such an 
amanuensis, intelligent, learned, industrious as Mr. Kendall 
was. He could think, but could not write ; he knew what 
nerve to touch, but he was no surgeon skilled in the instrument 
of dissection. Kendall was. But how came Amos Kendall 
there, in General Jackson's sanctum, where his saint's picture 
hung ! She had been most maligned by Amos Kendall, the 
editor of Clay's leading journal in Kentucky, during the can- 
vass. Kendall had called her "Aunt Rachel with the corn-cob 
pipe," and had exaggerated Robard's wrongs and Rachel's 
failings in every term of reproach and ridicule. There was the 
chief enemy who had maligned her, there hung the picture of 
the wounded saint, and there was the husband avenger who 
volunteered a vow at her grave! This was mighty strange I 
Not so, however, to those who knew General Jackson well. No 
man was cooler in his calculations than he was. He would 
sometimes seem to fight most rashly, but no one ever knew him 
to fight at all unless there was a stake up worth fighting for. 

Kendall had been a poor Yankee schoolmaster, and was a 
protege of Mr. Clay. He had been but a hireling, and was but 
a pen for the political malice of Mr. Clay's party. 

What had he (President Jackson) to gain by fighting the 
pen, the mere amanuensis, when his aim was to slay the 



lis SEVE.V DECADES OF THE UNION. 

prompter of all his wrongs ? Kendall, for cause, left the fallen 

house of Clay, and fled to the rock of power and strength. He 

knew much, could reveal much, could deliver up all the enemy's 

/ armory.^ He was indefatigable, unscrupulous, and able. He was 

I the very weapon for a pugnacious patron to use, and could surest 

I strike the arch-enemy, — be had been the arch enemy's own. 

General Jackson then could throw away prejudice, passion, 
vengeance itself, and vows, and coolly take Amos to that cham- 
ber, in presence of that picture, though he had applied the 
"scavenger's daughter" of torture to "Aunt Rachel!" Amos 
Kendall was his man, and he could and did use him with tre- 
mendous effect to destroy his first patron, Mr. Clay. 

Such was General Jackson, the man with whom Mr. Tyler 
and his compeers had to deal at the beginning of Mr. Tyler's 
career in the Senate of the United States. No two men were 
ever more unlike than Mr. Tyler and General Jackson. They 
were bred in totally difierent scenes and schools in life : the 
one a child of gentle people and brought up in ease, the other 
a poor boy of humble Irish extraction, orphaned and exiled by 
war and poverty to build his own fortunes in the western wilds 
of Tennessee ; the one taught and trained by the best of teachers 
and books, the other a Hercules of action, without learning, ex- 
cept that which was self-taught ; the one winning the stakes of 
life by gentleness and grace, the other taking them by main 
force and commanding success by seizing the prize he sought ; 
the one a civilian and orator, the other a warrior always in the 
camp of life, a leader of men, and in every sense a tremendous 
actor. Mr. Tyler had touched him sorely in the tender point 
of Arbuthnot and Ambrister, and he remembered what he 
deemed an unkindness, and he showed no good opinion of, or 
favor to, any one who had censured his course in that affair. 
Finding that Mr. Calhoun had censured him in the Cabinet of 
Mr. Monroe, he separated from him, though they were elected 
on the same ticket in 1828. Thus Mr. Calhoun's friends, among 
whom was Mr. Tyler, were soon made to stand aloof from Gen- 
eral Jackson; though in the main, as on the Maysville road 
bill, the States Rights party still maintained some of the lead- 
ing; measures of the administration. 



CHAPTER VI. 

THE FIFTH DECADE, FROM 1830 TO 1840. 

Debates from 1831 to 1832— The Tariff of 1828 for Protection— The Compro- 
mise — Mr. Clay the Great Pacificator — South Carolina Ordinances and Force 
Bill — Mr. Tyler the real and only Peace- Maker — The Presidential Election 
of 1832 — Democracy divided — Mr. Van Buren the Favorite — The Names of 
Factions — Mr. Tyler's Error of siding with Nullification — Difference between 
it and the Virginia Doctrines of Mr. Madison — The Conservative purpose 
and end of a Convention of the States for Cases of last Resort: 

We left Nashville and returned to Yirginia in the fall of 
1830, and began to take more note of public affairs, and more 
interest in public men. We had seen and scanned the Man of 
Iron Will, but, as yet, had never formed the personal acquaint- 
ance of Mr. Tyler. In 1831-32, he was e.'^pecially able on the 
Turkish mission in reply to Mr. Livingston. But the great 
question of that session of the Senate was upon the doctrine of 
Protection, raised by a resolution of Mr. Clay. 

The contest of parties upon what was called the " Bill of 
Abominations" of 1828, renewed and continued in 1832, arrayed 
section against section in the interminable strife between Free 
Trade and Protection. 

The North, with Webster in the lead, was at first for Free 
Trade ; Boston was opposed to the Protection policy. But in 
a short time the New England and other Northern States in- 
vested in manufactures, and their " sweet voices" for Free 
Trade were suddenly changed. The Southern States were the 
raw producers of the main staples for export, and their theory 
was that the consumers of imports paid the bounties of Pro- 
tection. 

After the contest had become embittered, and whilst sore and 
festering, Mr. Clay came forward with his resolutions distin- 

(119) 



120 SEVEN DECADES OF THE UNION. 

guishing between articles manufactured within and those man- 
ufactured without the limits of the United States. Articles not 
manufactured in the United States, except silks and wines, were 
to be duty-free, and this, of course, increased the duties upon 
articles in the country to the point of protection, and in many 
cases to the point of prohibition. The North had all the ship- 
ping, all the profits on ship-building, rigging, and victualing, 
and all the profits of freights and bottomry. This, in effect, 
was indirectly a tax upon exports and upon producers of exports 
in the South ; and now it was proposed to compel that section 
to use inferior domestic manufactures, and at the same time to 
pay the equivalent of heav}^ imposts on their consumption to 
this monopoly of home manufactures. 

Mr. Tyler met this issue with marked ability ; his effort was 
more than argument, it was prophecy, and an eloquence which 
implored like the warnings of a seer against the sowing of this 
dragon's tooth, to sprout armed warriors against the peace, 
union, and liberties of the country. It was a dragon's tooth, 
which caused the South Carolina Ordinances of Nullification, 
which called for the Proclamation of Force. In 1832 the dan- 
ger was imminent of armed resistance, when Congress put into 
General Jackson's hands the power of military coercion. It 
was then that Mr. Clay assumed the attitude of the Great Pa- 
cificator. After doing more than any other man to raise the 
storm, and hazarding civil war for Protection as a part, and 
major part, of his American system, he had the Machiavelian 
tact to claim the blessing and the praises due to the peace- 
maker. Mr. Tyler alone had the honor of voting against the 
Force Bill, while Mr. Clay, who raised the demon, got the credit 
of exorcising him. He would have pressed Protection to a 
conflict of arms, but that he knew that Jackson, his worst enemv, 
would win all the popularity of preserving peace. He there- 
fore made peace by a compromise of legislation, graduating a 
reduction of duties by a fixed scale, and a set time, and by 
classifying the articles subject to impost. 

The presidential election of 1832 came in the wake of Nul- 
lification and the Force Bill. And by this time, the begin- 



THE FIFTH DECADE. 121 

ning of the second term of General Jackson's administration, 
the Democratic party had split into factious, and was divided 
against itself. Mr. Yan Bureu had won the favor of the hero, ( 
just as the jackal wins the good will of the lion. He was 
called the "Mistletoe politician, nourished by the sap of the 
hickory-tree." He had bred strife between General Jackson 
and Mr. Calhoun, who was Vice-President during the first term 
of the administration. He had wielded the influence of what was 
called the " Kitchen Cabinet" and the " Petticoat Pet," and 
was nominated fur the Vice-Presidency in 1832 by the National 
Convention, though the Democracy of Virginia voted for Philip 
P. Barbour. 

At this time the Democracy became divided into — first, 
the Van Buren faction, called the " Locofoco" party, whose 
motto was, " To the victors belong the spoils ;" secondly, the 
Calhoun faction, the NuUifiers; and thirdly, a portion of the 
old Madisonian Democracy, who opposed both Locofocoism 
and Nullification ; and the opposition to the second term of 
Jackson's administration soon consisted of — first, the National 
Republicans of the Clay and Adams party; secondly, the Nul- 
lifiers ; and thirdly, that portion of the Democracy called the 
"Awkward Squad," which was opposed to Nullification, but 
which opposed Locofocoism also, and was disaffected to the 
administration by the removal of the public deposits from the 
Bank of the United States. 

It was out of these elements that the " Whig party" was 
formed in 1839-40. They could not unite in 1836. 

But the issues raised by South Carolina on the tariff of 1828 
and her position in 1832 presented the dangers of civil war in 
the conflict of Nullification and the Force Bill. 

Mr. Tyler sided with Nullification, and voted alone against 
the Force Bill, whilst Virginia opposed both. That issue brought 
us into Congress in 1833. Then, for the first time, we formed 
the personal acquaintance of Mr. Tyler. 

On the doctrine of Nullification we dilTered. We considered 
it a gross departure from the true faith of State Rights, and as 
tending to crush them and to bring strict construction of the 



122 SEVEN DECADES OF THE UNION. 

Constitution into discredit. We lived in the same congTessional 
district, and we found him and Upshur, Parker and Colie, and 
every leading politician on both shores of the Chesapeake, es- 
pousing the new faith. We were thrown into the breach and 
elected to Congress. 

Taking sides with Nullification was the leading error of Mr. 
Tyler's life. In this he departed from the true State Rights 
faith of Virginia, of which Mr. Madison was the exponent, 
not in going towards the extremes of Federalism, but in fol- 
lowing the lead of the South Carolina school of State Rights 
and remedies, on the opposite extreme, equally destructive of 
all rights and all remedies. 

Nullification, as promulged and attempted to be enforced 
by South Carolina, is a very different doctrine or faith from 
that taught by Mr. Madison and the Virginia Legislature from 
1798 to the triumph of the principles of Virginia in 1801. 

In the first place, the category of cases in which Mr. Madison 
applied the doctrine of State Rights and remedies was far differ- 
ent from the class of cases involving any question like that of 
a protective tariff". He applied it to such cases as those of the 
Alien and Sedition laws, involving fundamental principles of 
republican freedom, — the primary and essential natural rights 
of man, such as the right of residence and freedom of speech 
and of the press. The ordinances of Nullification were applied 
to questions of mere political expediency. Whether a denizen 
might reside unmolested in the country as long as he observed 
the laws, or a citizen might write or speak and publish freely, 
without incurring the penalties of sedition, were very different 
subjects of legislation from that of whether, under the general 
power to regulate commerce between the several States and 
with foreign nations, Congress might lay a tariff of duties, 
excises, and imposts in such a way as to yield protection as 
well as revenue. It is the plain distinction between cases in- 
volving rights which are inviolable, inalienable, and universal, 
and those which, in the sense of expediency, may exist or not, 
or vary or not, according to policy, or compact, or convention. 
Mr. Madison applied it in cases of last resorl for the conserva- 



TUE FIFTH DECADE. 123 

tion of inalienable rights, and Mr. Calhoun applied it in cases 
of governmental policy and expediency. 

But, as applicable to any class of cases, Mr. Calhoun, in fact, 
changed, and, as we think, essentially perverted, the true doc- 
trine, and this caused it to be misunderstood and misapplied, 
until it was brought into disrepute and was finally overthrown, 
if not forever destroyed. 

I. 

The leading fact, not theory, on which State Rights are 
founded is this: That the States, by the Revolution of '7G, 
became free, sovereign, separate, and independent States. 

II. 

That the Articles of Confederation did not in any degree or 
respect change or la the least impair this individuality and 
sovereignty of the States. 

III. 

That the Constitution of the United States, to which the 
States were parties and of which they were the creators, did 
not impair the original and separate sovereignty and independ- 
ence of the States. It formed only "a more perfect Union" of 
individual States, but preserved their separate identity. The 
Union was a union of individuals, and the individuals were 
States, assuming the plural, not singular, name of the United 
States, — united to act, to certain ends and for defined purposes, 
by common means of nationality, but not merged in that na- 
tionality ; united, but not consolidated, within the bounds of 
defined limitations of power. And while sovereignty was 
original in the States, whatever power was allowed to be 
exercised by the Federal government was derivative only, — 
derived from the States, delegated by them and to be exercised 
for them equally, according to their joint will as expressed in 
their written Constitution of the United States. State power 
is not Federal poiver at all; but all Federal power is State 



124 SEVEN DECADES OF THE UNION. 

power, delegated by them and for them as theii" joint power, 
but still their power, to be used for their union. 



ly. 

That the Constitution or covenant of Union was federative, 
founded on a fcedus of faith to and with States, the mutual 
contractors to act, each for itself, as to all State affairs, and to 
act in union with each other as to all sioecified and delegated 
cases, and reserving all powers not granted; each State being 
still sovereign, exercising all powers not granted themselves, 
and all granted powers by a common government of their own 
creation. 

V. 

That the Federal government was to be confined in its opera- 
tions to the powers granted by the States, as its creators, and 
to be limited hy special prohibitions, and by the general rule 
that powers not granted were withheld from the general govern- 
ment, because reserved to the States. 

VI. 

That in deciding all issues, whether the limitations of the 
grants of power were violated either by the common Federal 
government of the Union, or by the individual States, there 
was and could be but one common arbiter ; that the Federal 
government could not decide, in cases of last resort, either for 
itself or for the States, and much less could any department 
of that government so decide. The only arbiter was a conven- 
tion of the States. If that was not allowed peacefully to ad- 
just dissensions, then the only rule was the ultima ratio of 
sovereigns. Thus far, Nullification concurred in the tenets of 
Mr. Madison. But in the next and main principle of State 
Kights it diverged fatally from the true faith. It made the 
States irresponsible, instead of being judges for themselves on 
their individual State responsibility to each other. Thus : 



THE FIFTH DECADE. 125 

yii. 

That in the hist resort "each State for itself was the judge 
of the infraction as well as the mode and measure of redress." 

Here the departure from the true faith of State Rights be- 
gan. Mr. Madison laid down the rule as relative only, whilst 
Nullification contended that it was absolute. Mr. Madison an- 
nounced the position that each might judge for itself, but not 
without responsibility to each and all of the other States; that 
each might judge for itself of the infraction, but that resistance to 
a law passed within the constitutional limitations was as much 
an infraction as was the passage by Congress of an unconstitu- 
tional law, and that each might judge for itself of the mode 
and measure of redress ; but if one might judge that resistance 
to the law was her mode and measure of redress, another might 
judge that enforcement of the law was her mode and measure 
of redressing the infraction of, or punishing resistance to, the 
law. 

VIII. 

The laws passed in pursuance of, or in accordance with, the 
Constitution were undoubtedly the supreme laws ; but whether 
passed in pursuance or in violation of the Constitution was a 
question admitting of different tribunals for decision, according 
to the nature of the question and characters of the parties. 

In cases within the jurisdiction of the courts of the United 
States, between citizens and persons, or States and States, in- 
volving personal or corporate municipal rights, the Supreme 
Court of the United States was confessedly the tribunal of 
last resort as to parties to the suits in court. 

Until the decision was made in such cases, between such par- 
ties, to suits within the jurisdiction of the Federal courts, all 
parties had to receive and act upon and abide by the Acts of 
Congress as valid ; but the Supreme Court might, in such cases, 
between such parties, decide that they were invalid, unconstitu- 
tional, and void. These decisions operated civilly in personam 
and in rem, but not on political issues. 



126 SEVEN DECADES OF THE UNION. 

But b\' far the most importaut cases at issue were political 
cases, and not cases either of law or in equity for the courts. 
The Supreme Court itself had at the very beginning eschewed 
the power of deciding who politically was right or wrong. At 
the very beginning of the nineteenth century, and before the 
Supreme Court had taken this judicial ground for the sake of 
the Judicial Department, it left the political jurisdiction to the 
Legislative and Executive Departments, according to its assign- 
ment and distribution by the Constitution, to be controlled 
finally by the elections of the people, or by the conventional 
powers of the States. And this was salutary and safe, and 
practically wise and good, so far as pertained to mere municipal 
questions affecting persons and corporations as such. But it 
was inadequate and without power either in the case where the 
sovereign bodies politic, the States, interposed and contested the 
constitutionality of laws affecting their political rights, or where 
they contested the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court as to the 
political issues between the sovereign parties to the Federal 
compact, affecting the compact itself. When they did interpose, 
a mere municipal department of the Federal government, the 
Judiciary, could no more conclude them by decision than Con- 
gress, another mere municipal department, could conclude to 
bind them by legislation. This would have been to set up mere 
municipalities, the Judicial and Legislative Departments of the 
Federal government, over their sovereigns and creators the 
States or the people, the sources of all power. 

The clause which declares that the Constitution of the United 
States, and the treaties and laws of the United States made in 
pursuance thereof, shall be the supreme law, could not justly be 
interpreted to have any other than a municipal, not a sovereign, 
sense or meaning: that they were to be supreme within the 
limitations of the Constitution was to be decided only by the 
conventional powers of the States. It would have been absurd 
for the Constitution to forbid the Federal government, or either 
or all of its departments, to violate it, and then to give to the 
Federal government or either of its departments the power to 
decide whether it had violated the Constitution or not, for that 



THE FIFTH DECADE. 12T 

would be to give the power to declare its violations supreme, 
and to enforce them on States as well as on persons and prop- 
erty, without regard to constitutional limitations. So long as 
the cases were ordinary cases, of no vital and fundamental 
political importance, involving only municipal rights of persons 
or property, the laws of Congress were to be deemed valid, 
until decided otherwise by the Supreme Court, or when de- 
cided by that court to be valid, and in either case were supreme. 
But in plain, palpable cases, involving gross infractions of the 
Constitution, and sovereign issues, and the political powers of 
government or its departments, State or Federal, in cases w4iere 
the States were in conflict, the only tribunal was that of a con- 
vention of the States. 

This doctrine was most conservative and peaceful. Nothing 
else could or can preserve and perpetuate constitutional fed- 
eral republicanism. And nothing can better illustrate this than 
the late Confederate war with the United States. Could it, 
would it, ever have begun, and raged on as it did for four 
years, had this theory of political philosophy prevailed and 
been pursued? If, when the conflict became imminent, Con- 
gress, instead of assuming to decide political and fundamental 
and sovereign questions, and to clothe the Executive with the 
power of proclaiming war, and using force to coerce States and 
their people to submission, had construed the Constitution as 
obliging them, mere fiduciaries, to call together the sovereign 
States in convention, does any reflecting man suppose that 
there could or would have been a war at all ? 

If a convention of the States had been obliged to be called 
before Congress could have passed another Force Bill, and before 
a President could have proclaimed its execution by arms, the 
States would have obeyed the dictates of patriotism, peace, and 
humanity in readjusting dissensions, and reuniting in harmony 
of action, just as, amidst the same sort of dissensions, they 
were at first united by the wisdom of such men as Wash- 
ington, Madison, Edmund Randolph, Alexander Hamilton, 
Charles Coteswortb PinckiKy, Franklin, and ihcir con peers, 
in 1787-89. 



128 SFVFN DECADES OF THE UNIOlSr. 

Assembling together, delay and deliberation, debate and per- 
sonal attachment and private influences, postponement of un- 
necessary issues, and compromise and concession, would have 
infallibly kept the peace, and saved the blood and the treasure, 
the honor and the liberty, of the Union ! 

But the theory of consolidation made the Federal govern- 
ment supreme, without and above the conventional power of 
the States ; substituted Federal for State sovereignt}" ; converted 
the two words ''United States^' into the one word "Congress," 
and the plural word States into the word Nation; repelled the 
idea of the Union of States, and acted upon the forbidden idea 
of a numerical majority of the people. Already inflamed by the 
violent interest to set up an unwritten higher law above the 
limitations of the Constitution ; with the powers of mischief 
already in hand ; with but a fragment of State and popular 
representation seated in the Houses of Congress ; acting ex 
parte, and a part for the whole ; seizing arms, Congress and 
the Executive rushed into the war suddenly, without delay, 
without convention, without giving the people time to delib- 
erate, against the protestation of some of the original thirteen 
States, and ravaged the country by war, revolutionized the 
whole theory of republican constitutional freedom, and changed 
the government into a national, congressional oligarchy and 
military imperialism. 

But the chief safeguard of the Madisonian doctrine of State 
sovereignty, and State Rights and remedies, under our system 
of State and Federal governments, called " compositive," with 
very little meaning, by Mr. Wheatou, Avas the protection it 
afforded and insured to the persons and individual citizens of 
the people against the despotic dogmas of treason, forfeiture, 
confiscation, and military commissions, accoi'ding to the com- 
mon law ideas. 

In case a convention of States was called, as a political tri- 
bunal of last peaceable resort, to determine questions as to the 
compact, and failed to compose the conflicts of States about 
what the Constitution was or should be made, then each State 
had the right to judge for herself of the infraction, and of 



THE HF7H DECADE. 129 

the mode and measure of redress, and whether she would re- 
main in the Union as made or construed by the majority of 
States, or secede from the Union and resume her separate 
independence. It was not pretended by the Virginia school, as 
we have said, that this right was absolute, but only that it was 
relative. 

Thus, to take a case where the weaker States insisted upon 
the execution of a law passed by Congress, as the Act of 1793, 
to enforce the provision of the Constitution requiring the rendi- 
tion of all fugitives from lal)or from one State to another. The 
same rule would favor Virginia or South Carolina in recovering 
a slave, in that case, as would favor the New England States or 
Pennsylvania in enforcing a tariff for protection. Resistance 
to a constitutional law by a State was as much an infraction of 
the Constitution as the passage of an unconstitutional act by 
Congress. The Act of 1793 was decided to be constitutional, 
and universally acquiesced in by every State o-f the Union for 
forty years, and had been solemnly asserted as valid and 
binding by the Constitution, and adjudicated upon by the judi- 
ciaries of the States, as well as by the Federal courts and 
judges. At last, several of the States, Pennsylvania among 
others, attempted to prevent or obstruct its execution within 
their limits. Good faith required that there should be such a 
law ; it was plainly valid ; but some States declared that there 
was a higher law which forbade them to aid in its enforcement. 
They went further, and not only forbade assistance by their 
citizens or officers to its execution, but declared certain acts of 
slave-owners in pursuit of their rights under that law to be 
feloniously criminal, and bound their authorities to arrest, 
prosecute, and punish them for attempting to take their fugi- 
tive slaves under the Act of Congress. They left the United 
States officers and agents, judges and marshals, alone, without 
a posse to execute the Act of Congress. A slave-owner pur- 
suing his fugitive was liable to illegal arrest, trial, and infa- 
mous punishment for doing what was lawful under the Consti- 
tution and laws of the United States. Instead of having his 
lawful property restored to him, he was liable to be imprisoned 

9 



130 SEVEN DECADES OF THE UXIOX. 

in a penitentiary. This was nullification, remaining in the 
Union and nullifying its laws. The Southern States contended 
that the Northern States could not nullify the laws of the Union ; 
that if Pennsylvania, for example, judged the Act of Con- 
gress for recovering of fugitives from labor unconstitutional, 
and passed ordinances forbidding its execution within her 
limits, she might so judge and act, but not without just re- 
sponsibility. Her judgment and action alike related to sister 
States as well as to herself If she might judge the law 
unconstitutional, the sister States, each for itself, might judge 
it constitutional ; if she might judge the act to be an infrac- 
tion, they, under the same rule, might judge her resistance to 
it, or nullification of it, to be an infraction ; and if she might 
judge her mode and measure of redress to be by nullification 
of the act, they, in like manner, might judge their mode and 
measure of redress to be by enforcement of the act. 

And this mode of enforcement would be by using the powers 
and means of the common government to act on persons resist- 
ing the execution of the law. If the slaveholder, pursuing 
his fugitive slave, had been seized and imprisoned under the 
State law, he would have applied to the State judges for a writ 
of habeas corpus ; and if they were sworn, as in South Carolina, 
by a test oath not to execute or enforce the law of Congress, 
he would have applied for the writ to a Federal judge, whose dutv 
it was to issue it to the Federal marshal ; and if the sheriff, or 
the executive and militia of the State, had opposed his authority, 
and he could not execute the law, he would so have certified to 
the Federal judge, and he in turn would so have certified to the 
President of the United States, who, under his oath to see that 
the laws were faithfully executed, would have been bound to 
call out the army or have a body of militia to execute the laws, 
but as auxiliary only to the civil authority of the Federal 
courts, not as an act of war. And the same rule applied, 
e converso, against South Carolina resisting a tariff, as it did 
against Pennsylvania resisting the fugitive slave laws of the 
Union. Thus the rule was relative, and not absolute ; and 
under a relative rule South Carolina essaved to nullifv laws 



THE FIFTH DECADE. I3i 

absolutely within her limits, without responsibility to her co- 
States. It was vain, and exposed those of her citizens, who 
obeyed her ordinances and came in collision with Federal au- 
thority, to the pains and penalties of treason. But Mr. Madison 
avoided that error of construing the rule of State Rights. He 
pointed to the remedy of secession from the Union. If violations 
of the Constitution were palpable and gross, if oppression and 
inequality were avowed and practiced, if good faith and justice 
were set at naught by even a convention of the States, each 
State might judge for lierself whether she would abide in the 
Union or resume her separate condition as a State. In that atti- 
tude of State sovereignty, if assailed she would be " a belliger- 
ent," not a " rebel ;" her citizens would be "inimici non hostes,^^ 
not " hostes non inimici ;'''' the case would be governed by the 
"jus belli,^' absolute, if you please, but the citizens would be 
saved from the treatment of traitors ; the laws of war only, and 
not of treason, would apply. The act of the State would be 
revolutionary, but the revolution would be one of a conflict of 
States, not a conflict of citizens or subjects with government. 
The State would be responsible to the States remaining in the 
Union, but the mere municipal Federal government would be 
no longer the common agent, and she would be free from its 
authority, and would be amenable only to a convention of the 
States, though a convention of the States might act through 
the Federal government. In no case would the State be irre- 
sponsible, but she would be responsible to the convention of 
States, not to the Federal Congress, or Executive, or Judiciary, 
or all combined. 

The State could not be prosecuted for treason, nor could her 
citizens ; she could only be forced by the other States to submit 
to their equal right to judge of infractions and of the mode and 
measure of redress, and her citizens would be covered by her 
shield of sovereignty. 

This, we repeat, called forth most wisely the conventional 
power of States, — first, to judge of the infraction and of the mode 
and measure of redress ; and, second, and at last, to judge as to 
the propriety of the enforcement or repeal of the act resisted or 



132 SEVEN DECADES OF THE UNION. 

of the question of peace or war — of winning back the seceding 
State with amity or driving her into submission by subjugation. 
The true theory was that the Federal government, in such a case, 
could interpose no further than to call a convention of States, 
and that for it to interpose as judge and executioner of a State 
would be to assume at once and forever powers wholly incon- 
sistent with the limitations of the Constitution and with public 
law and liberty. These were our views in 1832-33, and we 
regret that they were not those of Mr. Tyler. He sided with 
Nullification. The members of the Senate in opposition to 
the Force Bill, all but him, left their seats when the question 
was taken on its passage, and he, therefore, voted alone against 
it. Though in error as to the theory, be was right as to the 
policy of not voting for that act ; and of no vote of his was he 
so proud as of that vote, to the last hour of his life. 

Thus Nullification, with its untenable position of an absolute 
rule of State Rights, afforded General Jackson the opportunity 
of establishing the maxim, " The Union must and shall be pre- 
served," and of appealing to Congress for the law of force to 
be executed by the Federal Executive to coerce a State into 
submission to the acts of Congress for the mere collection of 
duties and the regulation of commerce. He had always been a 
Democrat of the Strict Construction school. His model of a 
statesman, senator, debater, and politician had always been 
the celebrated William B. Giles, of Yirginia, whose political 
faith and practice would have guided him to the measure of a 
Force Bill by Congress, without an appeal first to a convention 
of all the States ; and he had countenanced Georgia in her 
barbarous nullification of the treaties and laws of the United 
States, in the cruel execution of the Indian, Tassels, against 
the notice of the Attorney-General (Mr. Wirt) and the orders 
of the Supreme Court of the United States, and in her lottery 
laws, by which the lands of the Cherokees, then a Christianized 
tribe, which had always been a faithful ally of the United 
States, were gambled away amidst horrid scenes of rapine and 
blood ; but, then, his favorite, Mr. Forsyth, of Georgia, was 
his Secretary of State ; and, in the case of South Carolina, the 



THE FIFTH DECADE. 133 

opponent of his invasion of Florida whilst it was a Spanish 
colony, and of his hanging Arbuthnot and Ambrister, Mr. 
Calhoun, was to be punished and crushed. This was the prece- 
dent, sanctioned by his example and by his immense popularity, 
which overthrew the maxim of Madison, that neither the Fed- 
eral government nor any of its departments was or could be 
umpire between the States, and established the supremacy of 
the Federal Congress, and the Executive, From that time forth 
the State Rights doctrine, first perverted and misapplied by 
Mr. Calhoun, and then directly assailed by General Jackson, 
began to decline and seem impracticable. Congress passed its 
Force Bill against persons resisting the execution of the laws 
of the collection of duties, and President Jackson ordered the 
commander-in-chief of the standing army. General Scott, to en- 
force their execution. He obeyed the order with alacrity and 
effect. 

Nothing then prevented a conflict by arms but the " Com- 
promise Bill" of the tariff of 1832-33. This example and 
precedent bore heavily upon the after-issues of 1860-61, as 
we shall hereafter see, and as we have grievously felt. 



CHAPTER YI I. 

THE FIFTH DECADE, FROM 1830 TO 1840. 

Bill to modify and continue the Bank of the United States — Mr. Tyler's Con- 
sistency — Mr. Tyler's Re-election to the Senate, to serve from the Fourth of 
March, 1833 — His Suggestions how to compose the strife of Nullification — 
The Removal of the Public Deposits from the Bank of the United States — 
Censure of President Jackson by the Senate — The President's Protest — Ex- 
punction — Mr. Benton's Notice — Mr. Tyler's Report on the Bank and Debate 
with Benton — His Presidency of the Senate — "Three Millions Bill" — Action 
of Virginia Legislature on Expunction — Mr. B. W. Leigh — Mr. Tyler's Resig- 
nation of his Seat in the Senate, and Letter — Mr. Rives elected to fill the 
Vacancy — Mr. Leigh on the Verb "to keep" — Scene of Expunction — Election 
of Mr. Van Buren — Annexation of Texas — The Threat by GeneraJ Jackson 
against France — Wharton, Archer, Samuel Houston — How Annexation by 
Arms was disappointed — The Boundary with Mexico — Jackson and Adams 
— The Sacrilege of D — ning Grotius, Puffendorf, and Vattel — General Jack- 
son's Unpardonable Sin in the Eyes of Mr. Adams. 

The measure which commanded the attention and drew 
forth the abilities of Mr. Tyler in the Congress of 1831-82, 
besides the Force Bill, was the bill to modify and continue the 
act incorporating the Bank of the United States. In every 
form he voted for amendments, offered by various senators, to 
weaken and restrict the powers of the Bank, as to its cur- 
rency; as to the power of Congress to alter or modify its 
charter; as to the rate of interest on its loans and discounts; 
as to the amount of bonus to be paid; as to the right of the 
States to tax its branches ; as to indefinite postponement ; and, 
finally, he voted against the bill, on its engrossment and on its 
passage. 

When one reflects upon his course, in 1812, censuring Messrs. 
Giles and Brent for disobeying the instructions of the legis- 
lature bv voting for the United States Bank charter at that 
( 134 ) 



THE FIFTH DECADE. I35 

earh' day, and vvlien one sees him repeating his opposition to 
the power of Congress to eharter a Bank of the United States 
in 1819, and finds him again, in 1832, opposing a recliarter in 
every part and in the whole, in detail and on the final vote ; 
and when one looks to his after-course, his votes and speeches 
in Congress in persistent and uniform opposition to the con- 
stitutionality of a Bank charter by Congress, the wonder is, 
not that he vetoed the Bank charters submitted to his approval 
as President, in 1841, but that anyone ever should imagine he 
would or could sign and approve a charter for a Bank of the 
United States, and that any one should have assailed his con- 
sistency on account of his vetoes. In no matter of his public 
life was he so consistent as in his course on the subject of 
chartering a Bank of the United States. 

The bill of 1832 was vetoed by General Jackson, and his 
veto of the Bank endeared him to the Democracy, and drew to 
him nearer than ever the advocates of State Rights and Strict 
Construction. Mr. Tyler was among the most zealous sup- 
porters of the Bank veto of General Jackson, though his vote 
on the Force Bill, afterwards, separated him forever from the 
then administra.tion. 

Mr. Tyler was re-elected by the legislator*; of "Virginia to 
the Senate of the United States, to serve from the 4th of March, 
1833. He had sustained General Jackson in vetoing the United 
States Bank charter, and he had in his speech on the Force Bill 
suggested the mode of compromising the conflict of Nullification 
with the tariff for protection, and, of course, sustained Mr. Clay 
in his great measures of pacification, the Compromise Bill of 
1832-33. This again put him farther apart from the adminis- 
tration, for General Jackson avowedly desired the opportunity 
and pretext to crush South Carolina, and to hang Mr. Cal- 
houn and his comrades for resistance to the tariff. The com- 
promise measures prevented civil war and withheld the arm 
of force 

But General Jackson was not contented with vetoing a bill 
for chartering the United States Bank anew: he was determined 
to wage war upon the then existing Bank. Between the ad 



136 SEVEN DECADES OF THE UNION. 

journnieut of Congress in March and its meeting in December, 
1833, he determined upon removing the moneys of the United 
States from the keeping of the Bank. 

Mr. Duane, his Secretary of the Treasury, declined to obey 
the orders of the chief Executive to remove the public deposits. 
General Jackson dismissed him at once from the Cabinet, and 
appointed in his stead Mr. Taney, who did believe that the 
interest of the United States required that the public moneys 
should be withdrawn from the Bank, and, consequently, with- 
drew them. The question of power was raised in the Senate, 
whether the Executive, in this mode, could assume control 
over the custody of the public treasure, and whether the Secre- 
tary of the Treasury was an officer of the executive or the legis- 
lative department of government, subject to the power of the 
President or of Congress. 

The Senate, by a decisive vote, censured the President as 
"assuming to himself power and authority not conferred by the 
Constitution and the laws, and in derogation of both," and con- 
demning the reasons assigned by Mr. Taney for the removal of 
the deposits. Mr. Tyler voted for this resolution of censure, not 
as on a question of "bank or no bank," but upon the ground 
that the Executive had no power to assume the custody and 
control of the Treasury of the United States without authority 
of an act of Congress, and without reason of probable danger 
or loss of the public moneys. On presenting a memorial against 
the removal of the deposits from the people of the city of Rich- 
mond, he said, " The memorialists look to Congress for relief. 
They ask not for a renewal of the Bank charter, but for the 
introduction of some Bidihle financial system; not one depend- 
ing on eccentric will ; not a treasury resting on agents appointed 
by the President, liable to be displaced at his pleasure, holding 
their existence but as the breath of his nostrils ; fleeting and 
ephemeral as whim or caprice, passion or political motives, 
might make them ; but resting on law, not to be changed but 
for high reasons of state policy, approved by the wisdom and 
sanctioned by the experience of Congress." 

This position took no departure whatever from his constant 



THE FIFTH DECADE. 137 

and uniform opposition to the charter of the United States 
Bank. 

As to the removal of the deposits, the only question with 
him before the country was, " Whether Congress or the Presi- 
dent was charged with the keeping of the treasury." 

This resolution of censure was passed by the Senate, and 
General Jackson immediately hurled back defiance by sending 
his memorable protest, which the Senate declared to be a 
breach of its privileges, and refused to place upon the journal. 

At once the work of expunction began which hurled senators 
from their seats in order to fill them with the pliant and supple 
tools of executive power to draw black lines on that journal 
around that resolution which dared to censure President Jack- 
son 1 Mr. Benton gave notice immediately of a Hanuibal-like 
vow never to cease in his eS'orts, so long as he had a seat in 
the Senate, until the resolutions of censure were stricken from 
the journal. He fulfilled the vow most fatally by expelling such 
men as John Tyler and Benjamin Watkins Leigh, of Virginia, 
and Hugh Lawson White, of Tennessee, and introducing ex- 
punction partisans in their places, until the indelible black lines 
were drawn 1 

Mr. Tyler especially became obnoxious to Mr Benton. The 
Committee of Finance of the Senate had been ordered to inquire 
into the affairs and condition of the United States Bank, and 
Mr. Tyler had made a full and able report from that committee, 
which was attacked by Mr. Benton in his characteristic vein of 
"Big Bully Bottom." 

Mr. Tyler killed his assault by dignity, decorum, and courtly 
contradiction. In reply to the charge that he was a partisan 
of the Bank, and that the report of the committee was "an elab- 
orate defense of the Bank," he said, " I am opposed, and have 
always been opposed, to the Bank. Inils creation I regard the 
Constitution as having been violated, and I desire to see it ex- 
pire ; but I should regard myself as the basest of mankind 
were I to charge it falsely." 

He was at this session elected president pro tempore of the 
Senate ; and one of his last acts was to vote against the amend- 



138 SEVEN DECADES OF THE UNIO/V 

meut made bj the House of Representatives to the Fortification 
Bill, placing three millions of dollars at the discretion of the 
President to provide for anticipated difficulties with France on 
account of her debt of only five millions due the United States. 
The failure of this bill vva-s afterwards made one of the pretexts 
for which Judge White was instructed out of his seat in the 
Senate by the legislature of Tennessee. But Mr. Tyler's seat 
was the first to be vacated by instructions to vote for Mr. Ben- 
ton's expunging resolution. (_ North Carolina's legislature had 
first instructed her senator, Mr. Mangum; but he had refused 
to obey or to resign ; and in February, 1836, the legislature of 
Yirgiuia was induced to instruct her senators to expunge the 
resolution of the Senate of March 28, 1834. The then gov- 
ernor, Mr. Tazewell, declined to transmit the instructions of 
the legislature to the senators of Virginia in Congress. They 
were sent by the presiding officers of the two houses of the 
General Assembly. The General Assembly of Yirginia had 
at previous sessions condemned the expunging resolutions, 
and the presentation of the resolution of the legislature to the 
Senate of the United States had caused Mr. William C. Rives, 
then the colleague of Mr. Tyler, to resign bis seat in the Senate, 
and Mr. Leigh had been elected in his place, as if expressly by 
command of the legislature to oppose expunctiou. When in- 
structed in turn by the legislature to vote for the expunging 
resolutions of Mr. Benton, Mr. Leigh wielded the fact of his 
previous instructions and his election to fill the vacancy caused 
by the resignation of Mr. Rives, with great eflect. He refused 
to obey or to resign, and wrote a very able letter justifying his 
course and reconciling his previous authorship of the doctrine 
of instructions with his then determination to resist to the 
uttermost an extreme, plain, and palpable violation of the Consti- 
tution. Mr. Tyler took a different course. He consulted with 
his friends, and he announced that he had always held and 
maintained the right a,nd power of the legislature to instruct, 
and the duty and obligation of the senator or representative to 
obey or to resign, to be absolute and imperative; and his 
friends, particularly Judge White, advised him that he had no 



THE FIFTH DECADE. 139 

election, and it was most politic to resign. lie was very reluc- 
tant to separate in his course from Mr. Leigh. We were re- 
quested to confer with the latter, and did so, and we regret to 
say that but one member of the Virginia delegation in Con- 
gress, within our knowledge, did him the justice and kindness 
10 confer with him. He was ready for the interview. He had 
already written his letter of response to the legislature, and 
was, as he always was, fully prepared. He read it to us, and 
made it the text of hours of commentary. It confirmed our 
opinion of him, that he was one of the greatest and noblest of 
the men of his day. 

If Virginia could have been embodied and impersonated, 
and placed where she could have heard and seen him, her in- 
structions to him to vote for the expunction would have been 
torn into tatters and scattered to the four winds of heaven. 

A man of striking manly beauty, with hair of silky, soft, 
chestnut brown, floating in curls imperial as those of Jove 
when Olympus shook with his nod ; a strong gray eye, which 
glowed as he breathed forth his inspiration of intellect and 
heart ; a finely-chiseled mouth, expressing the most delicate 
taste and sweet benevolence; and a nose < and chin of manly 
fortitude : — one could but inwardly exclaim, when looking at 
him and listening to him, " Os homini sublime dedit.^' 

His comments were sad and sweet in the extreme. His 
hymn of love to Virginia was exquisitely tender: — his mother, 
how high and holy in his reverence of her no tongue could 
tell ; and bow exalted he held her dignity. He could not see 
her defiled, and would not aid in degrading her at the foot- 
stool of tyranny, even though a tyrant demanded her prostra- 
tion, and much less would he give way to the prostitution 
of her to the uses of mere minions who a>!pii'ed to promotion 
by superservility to power, even if the President did not de- 
sire or demand the sacrifice of her self-respect. But he knew 
it was in vain. He foresaw and predicted the issue. The 
Congress would bow basely before a strong and popular Execu- 
tive, and the moment a Jackson was gone from place, would 
itself become the tyrant oligarchy of the country. The Con- 



140 SEVEN DECADES OF THE UNION: 

stitution would not protect against executive popularity, nor 
against congressional servility or tyranny. He counted the 
recreancy of the Senate then as the culminating-point of the 
reign of the Constitution, and almost portrayed the very course 
of events which have followed. But he was still urged to resign, 
and his severance from Mr. Tyler was deprecated ; he regretted 
this too, and insisted that he had an understanding with Mr. 
Tyler to act in concert, and disclosed a personal motive control- 
ling his own course, — that when North Carolina had instructed 
Mr. Mangum, her senator, to vote for expunction, he (Mr. 
Leigh) had counseled him to neither obey nor resign; and hav- 
ing given that advice to his friend, he could not in honor fail 
to pursue the same course himself. When reminded that Mr. 
Tyler had given no such counsel, and he could not expect him 
to obey it, he then said they would have to take different 
courses. With this he was never content. He always — very 
unjustly (we think) — complained that Mr. Tyler did not sustain 
him, forgetting that Mr. Tyler was free from any such obliga- 
tion as that of Mr. Leigh to Mr. Mangum, and that Mr. Leigh 
was as much pledged to go along with Mr. Tyler as the latter 
was pledged to go along with him, Mr. Leigh. So it was, they 
were obliged to separate. Mr. Tyler could not, and would not, 
obey the instructions, and, in accordance with the consistency 
of his whole life upon the doctrine of instructions and obedi- 
ence or resignation, he resigned his seat in the Senate of the 
United States on the 20th of February, 1836, and on the 29th 
of the same month addressed to the Speaker and members of 
the General Assembly of Virginia a letter of great dignity and 
strength, giving his reasons for not obeying their instructions, 
and for resigning his trust into their hands. 

This sent him back to private life, but not to obscurity; nor 
did it diminish his usefulness or prominence for promotion. A 
singular revolution of events and parties soon brought him 
again conspicuous for the highest trusts. He had served three 
years of his term from the 4th of March, 1833, and Mr. Rives 
was elected to fill his unexpired term until March 4th, 1839. 

This brought Mr. Rives and Mr. Leigh into contrast in the 



THE FIFTU DECADE. 141 

Senate. The contrast was one of high lights and deep shades. 
The subject was one involving constitutional law, a history of 
parliament, the limitations of executive power, the guards of 
legislative power, the freedom of debate, the independence of the 
separate departments of government, the dignity and duty of 
the Senate in respect to its proceedings and records, and the 
learning of philology. As a constitutional and civil lawyer, 
as a historian, as a logician, as a patriot, jealous of power and 
sensitive to any encroachment upon limitations guarding the 
rights of legislation and the freedom of resolutions and laws, 
as well as of debate, and as a scholar and rhetorician, no man 
compared with Mr. Leigh in the argument on the topic of ex- 
punction. He was a purist in his Anglo-Saxon, and his speech 
was, in its style, equal to that of the Elizabethan age of Eng- 
lish literature, not surpassed by the " well of English" of Dean 
Swift. His figure of the silkworm spinning its cocoon from 
its own bowels, as applied in this debate, is a fine specimen of 
the use of rhetoric's tools, and his illustrations of the verb "to 
keep," of its meaning in continuando, " to keep a journal," show 
how necessary is the knowledge of the meaning of words to a 
knowledge of laws and to the preservation of liberties. From 
every source of written language he proved the power of that 
verb. He went to the Ten Commandments, to the Old and 
the New Testament, to standard profane writers, to prose and 
poetry, to prove that it had a peculiar strength of meaning, 
always conveying the same idea of preservation — preservation as 
the thing was — and continual preservation ; and in winding up 
a paragraph of citations of its use, he said, " And, Mr. President, 
in that catechism which I learned at my mother's knee, I was 
taught ' to keep — to keep — to keep' my hands from picking and 
stealing, and my tongue from evil speaking !" 

He was not a vehement orator in tone, but was most earnest 
in utterance and manner. He had a soft, clear, flutelike voice, 
but it was not loud. He carried no audience by vociferation or 
violent action ; but he trickled, as it were, gently upon his 
hearers, and they were held in mute attention by a murmuring 
music, his eye looking more than he said, and his speech and 



142 SEVEN DECADES OF THE UNION. 

bearing glowing with a genial integrity of thought which put 
opposition to blush, it was so clear, so simple, so pure, so gener- 
ous, so just, and so warm with manlj honor and feeling. Every 
word was right in the right place, his accent and pronunciation 
were precisely correct, and the modulation of his voice was 
natural and sweetly touching. 

He was a small man, yet in speaking seemed large, so 
elevated was he by his theme, and so gallant and game was his 
mien. He was lame, one leg shortened, and wore a cork sole 
on one of his boots. When about to be emphatic, he; usually 
caught his left wrist in his right hand and sank back on his 
lame leg, pausing to poise himself, and, as he rose to the climax 
of what he was about to utter, would bear upon his sound leg 
and rise on it with his hands free. This attitude was not 
always graceful, but always excited sympathy in his hearer for 
his infirmity. It was thus he uttered the sentence about "keep- 
ing his hands from picking and stealing, and his tongue from evil 
speaking." He dropped back on his lame leg, his left wrist in 
his right hand, paused and settled himself, — in that pause fixed 
his eyes on Thomas H. Benton with an intense gaze, — began 
low, uttered softly as far as the words " my mother's knee," 
raised his voice at the words " I learned," and, pronouncing 
the words " to keep" three times, each time louder and louder, 
he rose upon his sound leg, loosed his wrist, and putting 
forward both his hands, exclaimed, " My hands from picking 
and stealing, and my tongue from evil speaking !''^ 

A pin might have been heard to drop on the floor of the 
Senate ; ther6 sat Mr. Benton, swinging back in his chuiir, his 
eyes looking up to the wall, patting his foot, and Mr. Leigh's 
eyes fixed on him for some seconds, which seemed hours. 
Breaths were drawn when those eyes were taken off of him. 
It was the touch of Ithuriel's spear, and the cravat of Chapel 
Hill was revealed as plainly as the " toad squat" was shown to 
be Lucifer himself. 

Mr. Leigh was a debater of the senatorial order. Had he 
been earlier in the Senate, as long as Clay, Webster, or Cal- 
houn, he would have been tht master there, with all three 



THE FIFTH DECADE. I43 

present. The longer he wore it the brighter and higher-mettled 
was his steel. He was an "intellectual bully," but never meant 
to be personal in debate. Every one thought that, in the in- 
stance just related, he meant to be personal to Mr. Benton ; 
but he did not so mean. 

This was proved afterwards. We were present at the draw- 
ing of the black lines. The clerk of the Senate, Asbury Dickens, 
rose to go after the journal to bring it in to do execution upon. 
It was brought and laid upon the desk before him; and just at 
that moment every senator opposed to expunction, except Judge 
White, rose from his seat and began to move out, Mr. Ben- 
ton making the most derisive and scornful exclamations as 
they made their exit. A man in the .gallery cried aloud some 
disorderly response, when Mr. Benton exclaimed, " Bank ruf- 
fians! bank ruffians! Seize them, sergeant-at-arms!" The man 
was immediately arrested, and brought before the Senate. As 
soon as this disorder was quieted, the clerk opened the journal 
at the page of the resolution of censure; it seemed to resist 
the opening, the back was stiff, and it shut together again, 
until pressed open wide, and the page so held as to lay upon 
it the rule by the straight edge of which the black lines were 
to be drawn. We could not but imagine the book of the journal 
as resisting the violation. It seemed like a living victim on 
the altar of sacrifice, and the scratch of the pen alone was heard 
in the awful silence which prevailed when the gall of party 
bitterness drew its lines in the blackness of darkness around 
the freedom and independence of the Senate. The moment 
was one of intense interest, and was disturbed by Mr. Benton 
rising from his seat, and ostentatiously congratulating persons 
in the lower gallery on the triumph of his resolutions of sub- 
serviency to the worship of a man who despised and denounced 
him. He was boisterously moving from man to man, reaching 
out his hand, until he came to the Hon. Baillie Peyton, of Ten- 
nessee, who waited his expected offer of a touch with such a 
countenance of contempt and detestation that he shrunk back, 
desisted from his gasconading, and resumed his seat. Peyton 
was just about to denounce him as a Chapel Hill thief, un- 



144 SEVEN DECADES OF THE UNION: 

worthy to denounce strangers as bank ruffians, when, fortunately 
for himself, he turned away. 

The next morning Mr. Webster requested us, as a witness 
of the scene, to prepare a description of it, which was done ; 
and, after the adjournment of that session of Congress, we por- 
trayed it at a dinner in Norfolk, in a speech which was published 
in full in the Richmond Whig of the time. In order to describe 
the apparent effect of Mr. Leigh's eye upon Mr. Benton when 
quoting the catechism taught him at his mother's knee about 
" picking and stealing," we said that a short time before we had 
visited the exhibition of the French painting of Adam and Eve ; 
that we thought we had found it obnoxious to a severely just 
criticism ; that Adam was reclining on the soft sward of Para- 
dise, and whilst Eve was resting by his side, whispering tempta- 
tion in his ear, the serpent coiled around the tree of Life was 
breathing the visible influence of evil upon the golden ringlets 
of her hair. The influence was painted : it was visible and 
tangible. This, we thought, was not the work or design of a 
master. It was French exaggeration ; the French had never 
been poets or painters ; none but a French artist, we thought, 
would be so poor in invention as to attempt to paint an influ- 
ence. It was not so much exaggeration as the poverty of art. 
But we admitted, afterwards, that the scene of Leigh looking 
at Benton, when illustrating the duty "to keep" a journal con- 
tinually as it was, as the catechism teaches " to keep our hands 
from picking and stealing," corrected and contradicted our criti- 
cism on the painting of Adam and Eve. An influence could be 
seen and touched. "We had seen it, and it had touched Thomas 
H. Benton. We had seen the look of Mr. Leigh upon him 
when he quoted the catechism. The bright strong eye lighted 
a flame ; that flame went forth like a sword to the man at whom 
it pointed, and pierced him to the dividing asunder of the joints 
and the marrow, — it was visible and tangible and could be 
painted ; and if the sword or spear of the angel might be seen 
to touch the toad, so artistic license allowed the mist or miasm 
of evil to be seen, felt, and painted. Mr. Leigh, on reading the 
speech, of bis own motion addressed a card to the Richmond 



THE FIFTH DECADE. 145 

press, saying that, whatever might have been the inference of 
his audience, he did not think of any personality to Mr. Benton 
at the time, and that if he had so meant he would have ex- 
pressed the meaning, as his wont was never to insult any one 
but in unmistakable and direct terras. The flrst time we met 
him afterwards we told him that the inference was so strong 
that he alluded to Chapel Hill, when looking at Benton, whilst 
making this quotation, that it seemed impossible he could mean 
otherwise. He was hurt, and again protested that he meant 
nothing personally offensive whatever. 

At all events, he totally overthrew every champion in the 
debate, and Mr. Rives was not even straw on the horns of an 
ox in comparison with him. He was an Ajax Telamon any- 
where in debate, but too honest, mentally and morally, for 
political life. We shall always regret that he did not follow the 
example of Mr. Tyler and resign. 

It is nicessary here to pause upon some points in General 
Jackson's administration during the last years of his two terms. 
The two major topics with him in the latter part of his reign 
were the election of his successor and the annexation of Texas. 
»0n the question of demanding the five millions from France, 
he had been peremptory in his tone, and no council of Cabinet 
or friend could mitigate or temper his demand. 

On that subject he had himself dictated the very language he 
would employ in uttering a threat direct to Louis Philippe. 
The Cabinet consulted to change the phraseology. Mr. Forsyth, 
then Secretary of State, was adroit in language, and wisely, he 
thought, changed the paragraph which the President had dic- 
tated. The change in words was but a shade different in 
meaning ; but he sought to make the message more diplomatic 
in terms and more conformable, of course, to peaceful and cour- 
teous national intercourse. It was in vain. When Mr. An- 
drew J. Donelson, the President's private secretary, brought to 
him the proof-sheets of the message, Mr. John C Rives, of the 
Globe, was present. 

Mr. Donelson read, whilst the general walked the room, pipe 
in his mouth, smoking, and the printer the only attendant. All 

10 



146 SEVEN DECADES OF THE UXIO.Y. 

was quietly listened to until the reader came to the passage 
relating to the five millions debt due b}" France. Mr. Donelson 
was evidently desirous so to read the paragraph on that subject 
as to avoid notice of the change in words which had been made. 
General Jackson at once paused in his walk, stopped, and 
said, " Read that again, sir." Mr. Donelson then read the 
passage distinctly, and General Jackson was instantly roused, 
saying, "That, sir, is not my language; it has been changed, 
and I will have no other expression of my own meaning than 
my own words." 

He immediately and vehemently had the change erased, and 
his own language, even more strongly importing a threat, in- 
serted, heard the message read through, and then placed it in 
the hands of Mr. Rives, forbidding him to let it be seen in his 
hands, or to let it pass out of his hands, until after it was 
printed as corrected and until permission was granted by him, 
" at his peril." 

Thus the message was made what it was, which literally 
wrung the five millions from France. 

He was wiser than his Cabinet. His absolute dictation 
won at once what their diplomacy would have been years in 
obtaining. 

But he was not always absolute in his dictation. He was 
not so in respect to the annexation of Texas. That darling 
project of his policy conflicted with another more darling, the 
election of his successor. 

When we went to Tennessee in 1828, we found Texas an en- 
grossing subject of interest to the Southwestern mind. Archer 
and Austin were forerunners there, and had made contracts of 
settlements with Mexico, which, drawing a population from the 
United States, were rapidly filling Texas up with democratic 
settlers, and Mexico became alarmed. She began to apprehend 
exactly what soon afterwards happened, a war with Texas and 
its subsequent annexation to the United States. 

This caused her to commence a series of acts arbitrarily re- 
scinding the contracts of Austin and others, seizing their acqui- 
sit'ons, and persecuting and oppressing the settlers from the 



THE FIFTH DECADE. 14Y 

Uuited States, who had, without their fault, been tempted by 
Mexico to seek homes in Texas. This aroused the friends and 
kindred of former fellow-citizens of these settlers in all the 
Southwest. " Off to Texas !" was the cry, — to assert the right 
of settlement there by contract, to protect the pioneers there 
already, and to take that fertile province from a despotic and 
semi-barbarous power, degraded by a mixture of races, white, 
black, and copper-colored, of whom it was said, " They are a 
nation whose men are all bandits, and whose women are all 
harlots !" 

At the first commencement of the Nashville University, which 
occurred after our arrival there, a youth, William Wharton, 
whose father was a Virginian, was graduated, and delivered an 
oration which marked him as a man of great promise. He 
was the pride of the Rev. Dr. Lindsley, who then presided over 
that Alma Mater of many another distinguished alumnus of the 
West. 

Wharton delivered his salutatory, and immediately went off 
to Texas to join Dr. Archer, also from Virginia, the first military 
leader of the Texas Revolution, and became, as was predicted 
for him, a distinguished soldier and legislator, and finally was 
made legate of the revolution to the United States. He died 
young, but lived long enough to accomplish his first purpose in 
life, and to fulfill a most urgent promise he made when beg- 
ging us to join our fortunes with his own, to tear Texas from 
despotism, in order to annex her to the United States. 

An older but not a better man than Wharton was soon obliged 
to leave his adopted State for her good. Samuel Houston was 
then the governor of the State of Tennessee. He had been a 
popular pet, but his life was one of most dissolute habits. He 
became a candidate for re-election to the office he held, but 
General William Carroll, one of the heroes of Jackson's cam- 
paigns, the comrade of General Coffee on the night of the 22d 
of December in front of New Orleans, was his competitor. 

The contest, it was thought by Houston and his friends, 
would be very doubtful at least. It would certainly have 
been bitter, for General Carroll denounced Houston in unmeas- 



148 SEVEN DECADES OF THE UNION. 

ured terms. He said on the streets of Nashville that Houston 
was a coward, that at the battle of the Horse Shoe he — then a 
private in the ranks — was struck by a ball in the arm, and " blul> 
bered so that General Jackson ordered the calf to be sent to 
the rear ;" and he spoke without reserve of his habits unfitting 
him for his place. Houston, then advanced in life, spent in 
dissipation, and still suffering from a seton in that wounded arm, 
sought to strengthen himself and insure his election by an alli- 
ance in marriage with one of the most popular and influential 
families in Middle Tennessee, residing near Gallatin. A sweet 
and artless daughter of that family was, in her flyflap bonnet, 
at a village school. She was captivating, and her heart had 
already caught the flame of the love of a suitor whose youth 
was suitable to her own. In that coy state of young girl's first 
love, the eye of the ogre fell upon her. 

Her family was sought by Samuel Houston from which to 
select a victim, not of his love, but his selfish electioneering for 
influence to save him in office. Poor, innocent, injured victim 1 
— the family were flattered by the governor, and she was torn 
from her youth and her pure, natural, maiden love to become 
the victim of his jealousy and his heartless, selfish ambition I 
The connection was so unnatural and so repugnant to public 
sentiment that it brought down upon the monster a chivalry 
which drove him from the seat of power which he defiled. Her 
champions placarded him on the public square of Nashville for 
every crime in the calendar which could deprive him of any pre- 
tension to be above a brute. General Jackson's gallantry alone 
aided him. He had been one of his soldiers, and was one of his 
political adherents, and Jackson was never known to desert a 
friend ! — he had to be servile to him, but he would serve him ; 
but he did not excuse his conduct, and advised him to resign his 
office and leave Tennessee, to join the revolution in Texas, giving 
him, doubtless, instructions then as to the conduct of the revo- 
lution. He was to be made its leader, n^ith the influence of 
General Jackson, then President elect of the United States, 
to back him. Houston at first affected a mind diseased, and 
put on the white-tanned skin of a pied heifer, and actually 



TUE FIFTH DECADE. 149 

wore it on the streets of Nashville until he left the State 
forever. 

General Jackson was a deep and far-seeing politician. He 
made especial use of Houston. The revolution in Texas went 
on, doubtfully enough, until it reached the critical point when 
President Jackson was to interpose the sword of tbe United 
States. How was that to be done ? None other than General 
Jackson in the Presidency would have thought of his way of 
violating the laws of neutrality. He suddenly declared that 
the boundary usually known to geography and to treaty as the 
line between the United States and Mexico was not the true 
line, and, by his organ, the Globe, stated that Mr. John Quincy 
Adams, being Secretary of State at the time the boundary with 
Mexico was fixed, had, out of his old grudge to the interests 
of the valley of the Mississippi, betrayed the United States, 
and agreed to a boundary too far east by several leagues of ter- 
ritory ; that the river Sabine was not the true boundary, but 
that the Nueces was the true boundary. In protecting the border 
of the United States against aggressions from belligerents on 
either side of the civil war in Mexico, he would order General 
Gaines to array his army for border protection with its front on 
the western line, which he avowed he knew to be the true line 
of neutrality. This is necessary to be known to save Hous- 
ton's reputation from the reproach of cowardice at the battle of 
San Jacinto. He was instructed by Jackson not to fight Santa 
Anna a decisive battle until he reached the front of Gaines on 
his pretended line, but to retreat across it, and then, if Santa 
Anna should pass it, Gaines was ordered to repel him by the 
arms of the United States. Houston was retreating under 
this secret understanding with General Jackson. His officers 
and men were anxious to fight, conscious that they were able 
to conquer, and were indignant when Houston, at San Jaointo, 
still ordered retreat. Two by two and ten by ten, they refused 
to retreat, and, against orders, turned to fight, Houston's mo- 
tives being misunderstood. They fought and whipped the 
enemy, and Houston, it is said, was wounded in the tendo- 
Achillis by his own men. He did not order the battle, and 



150 SEVEN DECADES OF THE UNION. 

was wounded by them under a mistake of his motives and 
in ignorance of his instructions. This prevented the success of 
deep-laid strategy. 

In the House of Representatives, in the Congress of the 
United States, there was a vigilant observer of the contest. John 
Quincy Adams, of Massachusetts, had watched the contest in 
Texas and the pretext for the new boundary. As soon as General 
Jackson assailed him, he was prepared to meet the assault. He 
gave a bunch of keys to a colleague in the House, and told the 
House that when he was Secretary of State, under Mr. Monroe, 
he had to fix the boundary of Mexico ; that he had called to his 
assistance General Andrew Jackson, who advised him that the 
true boundary was the river Sabine, and that he had caused 
him, Mr. Adams, to adopt that line ; that there was a note or 
memorandum of that interview between him, Mr. Adams, and 
Andrew Jackson, made at the time, in his escritoire at Brain- 
tree, Massachusetts, describing it particularly ; that it was in a 
certain bundle of papers, labeled as described by him on the 
floor of the House of Representatives ; that he had given the 
keys of that escritoire to a colleague to be forwarded to a 
responsible gentleman in Boston, who was requested to examine 
the escritoire at Braiutree for the paper ; that its contents would 
show on its face that, on a certain day, he, Mr. Adams, had 
consulted with General Jackson as to the true bouudar}^ of 
Mexico, and that General Jackson's own advice had been noted, 
and was one of the vouchers for his, Mr. Adams's, conclusion 
as to the selection of the Sabine. He said that if there was 
no such paper found as described, or that, if found, it did 
not sustain his statement, he would consent to submit to the 
reproach cast upon him in respect to the Mexican boundary ; 
but if such a paper was found, with the contents as stated, he 
would submit it as evidence that the accusation against him 
was false. 

' In due time the return to this search arrived in Washington, 
and fully sustained the statement of Mr. Adams. It showed 
his extraordinary memory and great care of memoranda. It 
sustained his statement beyond all ordinary tests of evidence, 



THE FiFTII DECADE. 151 

and he made a most triumphant speech in the House of Repre- 
seutatives, showing his fidelity to his country in the discharge 
of this duty. He had just taken his seat, when we happened 
to be passing it. At that time we were, personally, very friendly, 
and he even showed to us occasionally that we were a favorite. 
As we were passing, he called out, as Frederick the Great did 
to some distinguished general, " Come, sit by my side ; I had 
rather have you on my side than opposed to me." 

The seat which adjoined that of Mr. Adams being for the 
moment vacant, we took it ; and then perhaps occurred what 
will better illustrate the characteristic differences, or rather 
contrasts, of Adams and Jackson than any labored description 
could possibly do. Mr. Adams said, "Andrew Jackson is a bad 
man, and so are you !" 

" I am sure, Mr. Adams, that you do not call me to your side 
to insult or reproach me, but rather to give me instruction. 
What do you mean ?" 

"I mean," he said, "that you have some bad principles, — as 
that one man may hold another in bondage. You are bad so 
far as your principles are bad. But I especially mean to say 
that Andrew Jackson is a bad man because he has no princi- 
ples at all, and is therefore worse than a man with bad princi- 
ples." He then went on to say, "When I was Secretary of 
State, under Mr. Monroe, Andrew Jackson invaded Florida, 
and hung Arbuthnot and Ambrister. He was arraigned for that 
conduct before the Cabinet of Mr. Monroe. I alone defended 
his course, and put him on the high ground of international 
law, as expounded by Grotius, Pufifendorf, and Vattel, and his 
conduct was justified by Mr. Monroe and by Congress. He 
was justified in doing right by the highest authorities on the 
laws of nations. On the contrary, he preferred to plead orders 
to do wrong, rather than rely on the authorities of the law for 
doing right. He published a certificate from that old dotard, 
Johnny Ray (of Tennessee), that he had seen and read an order 
from President Monroe to him, General Jackson, to invade 
Florida, which certificate James Monroe, on his death-bed, pro- 
nounced to be a forgery. He chose rather to rely on a forged 



152 SEVEN DECADES OF THE UNION. 

order to do wrong than on the laws of nations to dv. /ight. He 
said, 'D — n Grotius! d — n Puffendorf! d — n Yattel! — this is a 
mere matter between Jim Monroe and myself!'" 

Jackson was the very man to d — n Grotius, Puffendorf, and 
Vattel ; and Adams was the very man to condemn him for that 
above all other things as a great malefactor. Jackson cared 
only for his justification ; but Adams was horrified at its mode. 
Jackson made law, Adams quoted it. 

Thus it was that General Jackson aimed to annex Texas ; 
but the unexpected victory of the Texans at San Jacinto dis- 
arranged his plan of doing so. 

Houston's orders were to retreat; but Archer, Felix Hous- 
ton, Rusk, and Wharton turned and fought, and captured Santa 
Anna before he reached the lines where Gaines was instructed 
to repel his advance upon the territory of the United States. 

Annexation was thus balked by an accident of arms, and 
policy forbade annexation by negotiation : the chances of the 
successor, Mr. Van Buren, might, and probably would, thereby 
be defeated. Jackson could not, in the face of the presidential 
election, risk the effect of that question on the North. 

Mr. Yan Buren had to be non-committal in order to make his 
election hopeful. 

Thus annexation Vv^as postponed for the time. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

THE FIFTH DECADE, FROM 1830 TO 1840. 

Intrigues to make Mr. Van Buren the Favorite for the Succession — Judge White— 
The Effect of the Ambition of the President to elect his Successor — The Elec- 
tion in 1836 — The Union of all Factions in Opposition, forming the Whig 
Party — The Election of Mr. Rives to the Senate of the United States in the 
Session of the General Assembly of Virginia of 1838-39 — Treachery to Mr. 
Tyler made him Vice-President — Mr. Webster's Opposition to the Nomina- 
tion of Mr. Clay — The Triangular Correspondence — Judge White's Warning 
and Prophecy — Mr. Clay's Pledges and Committals on Practical Points — 
Judge White instructed out of the Senate by Locofocoism in the Tennessee 
Legislature — Scenes with Mr. Clay in 1840 — His Habits up to 1844 — His War 
with Webster, resulting in the Election of Harrison and Tyler — The total 
Dismemberment of the Whig Party before Harrison's Inauguration. . 

Every intrigue was resorted to for the promotion of Mr. 
Yan Buren's prospects for tlie succession. 

The Kitchen Cabinet, as it was called, had gossiped Mr. 
Calhoun out of favor and out of the vice-presidential chair ; 
and the last years of General Jackson's administration were 
devoted to the great end of electing his successor. All the 
personal influence of the President, and all the magnetic influ- 
ence of his patronage, were brought to bear on that one leading 
object. This dominant passion seemed to pervert his will and 
change his professions of policy and principles, and exposed 
his administration to every approach and reproach of venality 
and corruption, and the country to all their dangers. The evil 
was manifest at once to all his patriotic friends, who before had 
been his main pillars of strength. 

The name highest on the list of Andrew Jackson's friends, 
which vouched for his ability and fidelity and for his wisdom 
and virtue, was that of Hugh Lawson White, the Nestor of his 
day in the Senate, and the Cato of bis country. He had been 

(153) 



154 SEVEN DECADES OF THE UNION. 

the dignified, reserved, seuatorial counselor of his neighbor and 
early friend, and had declined every tender of office — promotion 
could not be conferred on him — after that old friend, under a 
debt of deep gratitude to him, was placed in power. Hugh L. 
White, the Senator from Tennessee, was, in fact, more than any 
other man responsible for General Jackson's " good behavior" 
in the Presidency. He was sincerely a true and devoted friend 
of General Jackson, and writhed, as a guardian over the errors 
of a ward, when he saw him, misled by mercenaries and aspirants, 
prostitute his power to his passions to defeat his political oppo- 
nents, and allow his patronage to become the plunder of corrup- 
tion. No honest guardian of his good faith, no honest partisan 
of his past policy and profession of patriotic principles, could 
stand this violation of pledges to integrity of administration. 
No man had ever been elected so distinctly on a single stand- 
point of preference as General Jackson had been elected against 
the evil example of " bargain and corruption." For him in 
turn to pursue his ambition to elect his successor by permitting 
corrupt appliances of power and patronage, was especially an 
unpardonable error. Every friend who loved " Rome more 
than Caesar" was obliged by a duty to the country to oppose 
bis designs and the means by which he was promoting them. 

His cruel, harsh, and unjust policy of removing the Indians 
of Georgia west of the Mississippi, in violation of the most 
solemn treaties as well as of the most sacred rights of humanity ; 
his mercenary policy of administering the public land system ; 
his removal of the public money from the custody of the law, in 
favor of a combination of State pet banks ; his countenance of 
the use of the money-power of those banks to influence the State 
elections, as evidenced by the " wool-clip letters" of Reuben M. 
Whitney, the agent of the Treasury Department ; his violent 
disruption of the pet bank system, to be displaced by the Sub- 
treasury scheme to subject all revenue, all fiscal control, all 
currency, all circulating medium, all exchange, and all public 
and private credit to executive dictation, were exertions of 
power and evidences of purpose but too obviously intended to 
elect his own successor, and were not to be countenanced or 



THE FIFTH DFCADE. 155 

tolerated by honest, earnest patriots, however closely they had 
been allied to him as his partisans in former contests. This 
threw off from him all men of the type and tone of Hugh 
Lawson White, though it bought him " spoilers" enough to 
more than make up in numbers at the elections for all the 
honest supporters he lost. He tried all his most winning 
arts to retain Judge White ; but the latter could not be pre- 
vailed on either to take Van Buren as a choice for the Presi- 
dency, or to countenance the example of a President electing 
his successor. He could not but see that the example was 
immoral and vicious in itself, and tended to destroy the in- 
tegrity of government and the liberties of the people ; that 
it was debasing to the public administration, and so defiled 
all popular elections as to destroy their freedom. The country 
could not be safe with such a popular idol in the presidential 
chair. It was threatening enough, and more than dangerous 
enough, in the hands of the lion ; but how low and how mean 
would it become in the hands of jackals succeeding ! The lion 
would never prefer a lion, — he always preferred the lower 
brute for a favorite ; and the lower brute was not Gt to be 
king. If a Jackson might elect his successor, the successor 
was sure not to be a lion, — he was naturally obliged to be a 
brute of a less noble nature. The election of a successor 
made everything bend to its baneful purpose, and all the 
executive departments became hideously corrupt, disordered, 
and dangerous. Good men of all sections began to abandon the 
administration and look out for some man on whom to unite 
in opposition to succession by dictation and corruption. 

Unfortunately, they could not then combine on any one man. 
Judge White could not be flattered to support Mr. Yan Buren, 
and then threats and open denunciations were resorted to, to 
prevent him from allowing his name to be used as that of a 
candidate in opposition to Mr. Yan Buren. His great virtues 
had called attention to him as the proper candidate, for the sake 
of the public good ; but there were aspirants everywhere, and 
their partisans could not or would not unite. Judge White 
was no aspirant, but when threats were used to intimidate him. 



156 SEVEN DECADES OF THE UNION. 

his self-respect, pride, pluck, and patriotism, all combined to 
make him accept a norainatiou by his native State, Tennessee, 
in the month of October, 1835. Mr. Tyler's name was placed 
upon the White ticket for the Y ice- Presidency in 1836 ; and the 
ticket of White and Tyler carried the State of Tennessee by ten 
thousand votes in that year, against the mace of Jackson and 
the strength of Locofocoism. 

Mr. Yan Bureu was elected, but the glory of the Jackson 
Democratic Republican party had departed, and the party 
whose motto was, " To the victors belong the spoils," rose, to 
reign but one term in the Presidency. 

The opposition to the succession could not be organized in 
1886 ; but the moment Mr. Yan Buren was elected, the elements 
opposed to him came together, casting aside all past political 
differences, in order to reprove corruption and reform the admin- 
istration of the Federal government. Bank and anti-bank men, 
tariff and anti-tariff men, internal improvement and anti-internal 
improvement men, annexation of Texas and anti-annexation of 
Texas men, pro-slavery and anti-slavery men, men of all parties 
and political creeds, saw the necessity of combining simply upon 
a pure and patriotic administration of the government, which 
would guard the public liberties and the laws. The friends of 
Judge White were the last of the original friends of General 
Jackson of 1824 and 1828 who came out from the Jackson 
party ; but they were still Democratic Republicans in both the 
popular and the State Rights sense of that term, as they had 
been when General Jackson was first elected. The question 
was, whether they — anti-bank and anti-protective tariff, anti- 
internal improvement by the Federal government, pro-annexa- 
tion of Texas, pro-slavery, anti-Federal and anti-latitudinarian, 
pro-strict construction of the Constitution, and pro-State Rights 
Democrats of the Madisonian school — could unite with old 
Federalists, and all their extreme opposites in political faith, 
in order to crush the Van Buren party of " spoils and corrup- 
tion." 

The first two years of maladministration by Mr. Yan Buren, 
from March, 1837, to March, 1839, determined the question of 



THE FIFTH D EG ABE. 157 

uuion or division among men of all political creeds, however 
variant and dissentient in their principles. They were obliged 
cither to take sides with open corruption, and shamelessly seek a 
share of the spoils, or else to compromise honest differences of 
opiuiou in law and politics, and combine to save the country 
from the worst dangers of maladministration, the effects of 
corruption and decay. 

The first two years of the Van Buren term were occupied 
in bringing the odds and ends of old parties into one combined 
opposition to the "spoils party." It was a new monster, with- 
out any principles, and of the worst practices, equally odious 
to all old parties, however they may have been opposed to one 
another or divided among themselves. This effort at entire 
reorganization and combination of old parties and factious made 
the years 1838 and 1839 notable in political history. The new 
name of Whigs, a generic name, was then for the first time 
adopted for the opposition. 

Mr. Tyler had, in 1836, retired to private life, and dutifully 
labored at the bar for the support of a large family; but his 
fellow-citizens of Williamsburg and James City, where his resi- 
dence then was, would not permit him to remain in private life. 
In 1838 he was again returned a delegate to the legislature, 
and was a member of the House of Delegates when the elec- 
tion of a State senator in Congress recurred in the session of 
1838-39. 

Mr. William C. Rives had been elected for the unexpired 
portion of Mr. Tyler's term when, in 1836, Mr. Tyler resigned 
his seat in the United States Senate. The re-election of Mr. 
Rives in opposition to Mr. Tyler now came up. There was the 
second to Mr. Benton, one of the most obnoxious instruments 
of expunction, arrayed against the victim of expunction, before 
a legislature in which Mr. Tyler's immediate friends had the 
balance of power, though they had not the power of election. 

The Yan Buren faction centered on Mr. Rives, and, to the 
surprise of Mr. Tyler, a portion of the Whigs were found 
to back his opponents. The contest continued for days of 
stubborn struggle and doubt. The wonder was why, after 



15S SEVEN DECADES OF THE UNION. 

thirty-eight ballotings, neither could be elected, and the won- 
der still greater was, why Whigs should vote for Mr. Rives! 
It was solved at Washington City, among the politicians there. 
The Whig leaders there, Mr. Clay at their head, had coldly 
calculated that by re-electing Mr. Rives to the Senate, even 
over Mr. Tyler, they could make him their own, and that by 
his strength, added to that of the Whig party in Virginia, they 
could carry that State. 

Emissaries were sent to Richmond by the Whig leaders at 
Washington, to carry out their scheme of treachery to Mr. 
Tyler. He was then in opposition to Mr. Yan Bureu ; as an 
opponent of the spoils party, he had been instructed out of his 
seat in the Senate of the United States, because of his refusal 
to vote to desecrate the journal of the Senate ; Mr. Rives had 
been found willing to do that deed, and did it ; and yet two years 
afterwards the Whigs were found striving to re-elect Mr. Rives 
over Mr. Tyler, — the instrument of expunction over its victim ! 

Mr. Tyler was often afterwards denounced by the Whigs for 
various acts of treachery, but no one act with which his ene- 
mies charged him would have equaled, had the charge been true, 
this treacherous tergiversation of their own. They were fairly 
caught in the act, and in their confusion of shame at the detec- 
tion, they agreed that if Mr. Tyler^s friends, who withheld 3Ir. 
Bives^s election by the legislature, would yield his re-election, 
Mr. Tyler should he nominated on the Whig ticket for the Vice- 
Presidency. That was the secret of his nomination for that 
office. It was agreed upon as early as 1838-39. 

Mr. Tyler's friends, who had thus far defeated Mr. Rives, 
would not consent to vote for him, but they left their seats at 
last, and lessened the number of votes, so that a majority for him 
was obtained. 

Thus was Mr. Rives re-elected to the Senate after expunc- 
tion, and thus was Mr. Tyler's nomination to the Vice-Presidency 
secured, during the session of the Virginia legislature, before 
the nomination of President and Vice-President, at Harrisburg, 
in 1839. The particulars of that intrigue were never alluded 
to at the time, and have never before been made public. 



THE FIFTH DECADE. 159 

It silently worked out its object of defeating Mr. Tyler, but it 
failed to effect its purpose of electing Mr. Rives to the Senate, 
and was likely to damage the hopes of the Opposition. During 
the ballotings the friends of Mr. Tyler discovered the design, 
and were indignant at the attempt. Judge John B. Christian, 
the brother-in-law of Mr. Tyler, becoming aware of the Whig 
game, wrote to a friend in Congress, inquiring whether it could 
be possibly true that the Whig leaders had sent their emis- 
saries to effect such a purpose. The friend immediately ad- 
dressed himself in person to Mr. Clay. He informed him of the 
letter' and of the inquiry. At first he declined to answer, deny- 
ing his responsibility for what any one was doing at Richmond 
in the matter of the election of senator from Virginia. The 
friend in turn declined to be put off in that way. He told him 
he knew that the report had already reached the authors of the 
scheme ; that a certain influence had balked its success ; that 
that influence would continue to do so until it should be finally 
defeated ; that the design to defeat Mr. Tyler by the election of 
Mr. Rives, was regarded by the friends of the former as the 
grossest ingratitude to one who had made the sacrifice of his 
seat in the Senate for the good of the Opposition ; that the 
attempt to elect Mr. Rives over Mr. Tyler, in view of the 
iniquity of expunction, perpetrated by the one and opposed by 
the other, of which the one was the instrument and the other 
the victim, was a breach of good faith, an instance of corrup- 
tion ; that, if it should be effected, it would be at the expense 
of the Whig party, and very damaging to Mr. Clay's prospects 
for the Presidency ; that if the party gained any friends in 
consideration of Mr. Rives's election, it would lose more in 
consideration of Mr. Tyler's defeat; and if he, Mr. Clay, could 
not explain his complicity in the intrigue, Mr. Tyler's friends 
should be informed that their apprehensions were well founded 
and they would act accordingly. He at last consented to enter 
into explanations. He admitted that he was aware of the 
attempt to elect Mr. Rives ; that he had been consulted as to 
the policy of so doing ; that he had said that he preferred Mr. 
Tyler's election, if it could be effected, but that, if the party 



160 SEVEN DECADES OF THE UNION. 

could not elect him, it would be politic, under the circumstances, 
to do the best the party could, to take Mr. Rives, or any other 
weapon with which to bruise the head of the serpent of Van 
Burenism. 

The friend replied that the attempt to elect Mr. Rives on this 
recommendation had alone defeated the election of Mr. Tyler ; 
that it would cause his friends to unite against the nomination 
of him, Mr. Clay, to the Presidency. Mr. Clay said that it was 
his chief desire to carry Virginia for the Opposition, and that he, 
for his part, would prefer to be defeated for the Presidency with 
the vote of his mother State in his favor, to success with her 
vote against him ; and he had advised the election of Mr. Rives 
only in the event that it would be most conducive to carrying 
the State of Virginia for the Whig party ; and if Mr. Tyler could 
be elected, and it was best for the party, he preferred him to 
Mr. Rives. 

This was noted immediately in his presence, the friend com- 
mencing the reply to Judge Christian whilst sitting by Mr. 
Clay's side, and writing at his dictation. When the letter was 
finished it was read to him, and he approved of it, and from his 
desk it was taken to the mail. On leaving his seat the friend 
said to him, " Remember, Mr. Clay, this is your statement, not 
mine, and I send it to Judge Christian with the sole motive of 
saving you from the consequences of any suspicion that you are 
disposed to betray Mr, Tyler." 

He expressed an earnest desire that the harmony of the party 
should not be disturbed, but he was told that he would be held 
responsible for its breach. The contest still went on at Rich- 
mond, and a second and a third time the friend of Mr. Tyler, at 
Washington, was approached with the request to advise the 
election of Mr. Rives. 

He declined again and again, on the ground that the sin of 
expunction was unpardonable ; that Mr. Rives had allowed 
himself to be its tool, and had driven Mr. Tyler from his 
seat in order to take the opportunity of perpetrating a gross 
and degrading violation of the Constitution, in subserviency to 
the man-worship of Jackson and the bullying of Benton. At 



THE FIFTH DECADE. 161 

last Mr. Clay and others appealed in such urgent terms that 
they were told, " The friends of Mr. Tyler will never consent to 
the re-eleetiou of Mr. Rives, the tool of expuuction, over Mr. 
Tyler, its victim, until the party of the Opposition consents 
to place Mr. Tyler in nomination for the Vice-Presidency, so 
that he may, if elected, preside over his expunging opponent in 
the Senate." 

To this arrangement Mr. Clay pledged all his influence and 
exertion, and immediately the friends of Mr. Tyler, at Rich- 
mond, were advised to stand out of the way of Mr. Rives, which 
they did. They could not be induced to vote for him, but, on 
the calling of the ballot which elected him, they retired from 
their seats, and were not counted on the ballot, and he was thus 
allowed to be elected by a bare majority. 

Mr. Clay was warned at the time that he was agreeing to an 
arrangement which might throw him out of the nomination for 
the Presidency, for the President would hardly be nominated 
from Kentucky if the Yice-President were chosen from Yirginia ; 
but at that time he was not so sanguine of the party's uniting 
on his name, and if it did so unite, he knew that the lesser 
would certainly be made subordinate to the greater nomina- 
tion, — the Vice-Presidency to the Presidency. But Mr. Tyler's 
friends took the chances, knowing the influences at work against 
Mr. Clay himself. Those influences developed themselves po- 
tentially in the succeeding session of Congress, in 1838-39. 

Mr. Webster was undoubtedly opposed to the nomination of 
Mr. Clay, and his influence was more powerful in New York 
than it was in New England. Clay's reliance was on the West 
and Northwest, and he counted for success upon obtaining the 
influence of Judge White's friends in Tennessee and Virginia. 
But Judge White himself might still be a candidate. He had 
been run for the Presidency, in 1836, against his wish ; but, 
having been defeated then, he might deem it his due to be run 
again when there was a chance of success. Mr. John Bell, the 
leader of the White and Tyler nomination in 1836, seeing that 
there was no probability of the nomination of Judge White, was 
anxious to have him decline in order to make way for his support 

11 



162 SEVEN DECADES OF THE UNION. 

of Mr. Clay. No one knew what Judge White would do as to a 
nomination, whether he desired or would decline it; or, if he 
declined or did not obtain it, whether he would support Mr. 
Clay. We were at the time living at the same house with Judge 
White, and proud of his intimacy and confidence. He was one 
of the best judges of men and things we have ever known, and 
one of the purest and most exalted patriots who ever served his 
country, always unselfishly, with a stern virtue and the strongest 
sense of duty, uninfluenced by fear or favor, but ever touched 
by the tenderest devotion and affection. He was grave, taciturn, 
and laborious, always conscientiously exact, strict, and precise, 
and abhorred every form of deceit, injustice, or want of ingenu- 
ousness. He committed himself rarely and slowly, but once 
committed he was immovable as a rock unless convinced of a 
wrong, and was wholly inapproachable by any indirection or 
circumvention. His knowledge of the intrigues going on around 
him was inexplicable, and the thoughtfulness by which he dis- 
cerned and resolved them almost awed one as by the presence 
of a seer whose prophecies were certain to be realized. He 
was very thin, tall, and ghostly in appearance, but was physi- 
cally very sinewy and strong, and had immense capacity for 
labor. His eyes were a clear blue, but small, and so deep- 
set that when he drew his brows over them in thought or con- 
versation they looked like black diamonds, scintillating various 
sparkling lights ; and his lips were so compressed that he wore 
an appearance not only of firmness but also of constant restraint 
and self-command. He was always terribly in earnest, yet at 
times enjoyed humor, such as that of the inimitable Baillie 
Peyton, and when be did smile, which was seldom, it was the 
sweetest smile we ever caught from lip or cheek of man. He 
was a great and good man, without fear and without reproach. 
One evening in the session of 1838-39 Mr. Clay and Mr. 
Bell called upon us at our room and at once opened upon their 
desire and purpose to ascertain w^hether Judge White expected 
to be nominated again for the Presidency, and if not, whether 
he would support Mr. Cla}', or whom he would support. They 
eaid they came to us because we had better access to him on 



THE FIFTH DECADE. 163 

that subject than any of his colleagues, who desired not to seem 
as presuming even that he would not permit his name again to 
be used. They all loved him, preferred him to any other living 
m.an, but knew he could not be nominated, and therefore they 
felt great delicacy in approaching him on the subject. Mr. Clay 
desired to know his views, and, above all, desired to have his 
influence. We told him that there was but one way proper in 
which to approach Judge White. It was usele-ss to attempt it 
by indirection, or by any circumlocution or circumvention. He 
bad to be approached with the naivete of a little child: one 
would have to go, as it were, to his knee, look up in his ven- 
erable face, with truth and innocence on one's brow, and say, 
" Judge White, Mr. Chiy and Mr. Bell requested me to ask, 
Will you please stand out of Mr. Clay's way and give him your 
influence for the Presidency ?" 

Mr. Clay laughed heartily, and said that he believed honesty 
was the best policy with Judge White, and he left it to us to 
take our own way ; he was certain it would not be like that of 
any one else. He was reminded that Judge White was not to 
be treated like any other man ; that if diplomacy was attempted 
with him, he was so godlike in wisdom and so instinct with virtue 
that he would divine one's own thoughts before fully fit for his 
inspection ; and that if any arts of address were used with him, 
he would give a look which no one would wish to meet, but not 
a word would be got from him. We would see him at their 
instance, and report in due time. 

After tea one evening succeeding this interview. Judge White 
had retired to his room ; we tapped at his door, and were at 
once admitted. He was at his table, as usual, arranging his 
papers for the night's labors, but laid everything aside upon 
our entrance, and, without equivoque or reserve, we told him 
at once the object of our visit. His face had at times very 
singular expressions. Whenever his attention was suddenly 
arrested by some important matter new to him, presenting new 
aspects, or revealing fully some suspected facts or truths, 
there would be, involuntarily as it were, a slow contraction 
of his brow, a close compression of his lips, and a rapid work- 



164 SEVEN DECADES OF THE UNION: 

ing of his nasal muscles and nostrils, with a hard and audible 
rapid breathing. He heard us through, as he always did every- 
body, and quickly this singular expression came over his coun- 
tenance, and he sat breathing and musing in silence. We rose 
after a few moments, saying that, having discharged our mis- 
sion, we would retire. He immediately arose, took us by the 
hand, and said, warmly, that we could not have done him a 
greater political favor ; and Mrs. White, his good, kind wife, 
remarkable for her discernment, dignity, and good sense, stepped 
to the door and added her especial thanks. 

We left him to his own reflections, confident that they would 
be wise and prudent ; and in a few days our confidence in him 
was confirmed. He came, after taking his own time, to our 
room, and there and then explained his past course and mo- 
tives, reviewed the then current political events, disclosed his 
own purposes and resolutions, discussed the politics and pros- 
pects of every probable candidate for the Presidency, and 
opened a vista of prophecy for twenty-five years of the future of 
the United States, which has since been so surprisingly fulfilled 
that we never think of him and of that conference without 
wonder. He reminded us how he had been compelled, by the 
dictation of General Jackson as to his successor, to allow his 
name to be used for the presidential nomination in the year 
1836. He had never desired the nomination, but had been 
obliged to accept it, in order to resist dictation and to meet the 
charge that he was misrepresenting his State and her people in 
opposing Mr. Yan Buren. 

He had run, in fact, for Tennessee alone, and Tennessee had 
amply vindicated his course against every appeal and appliance 
of Andrew Jackson himself. That was sufficient for him, and he 
claimed no more. He said that he knew too well the aspirations 
and machinations of men and parties and factions at Washing- 
ton, and the probability of events, not to know that he had no 
chance for another nomination, but that even if the chances for 
it were good, or the best, he had no desire for the Presidency. 
That he was then an aged man, had lost many of the most 
precious objects of life, was trying to make his latter days like> 



THE FIFTH DECADE. 165 

those of a Christian about to depart to a better world, had no 
longer any aspirations in this world but to see his country re- 
main free and prosperous, preferred retirement, and was pre- 
paring to die in peace, and he must not be deemed or suspected 
as in the way of any aspirant. That was the solution of the 
first problem, — he would not again accept a nomination for the 
Presidency. As to whom he preferred and would give his in- 
fluence to, that was another question. His own political opinions 
were well known to all; they were those of a long lifetime, uni- 
formly held and carried into practice in conspicuous places, 
State and Federal, of a protracted public service. They were 
consistently and persistently Democratic Republican, of the 
Jefferson and Madison school ; State Rights and the Constitu- 
tion strictly construed, limited Federal powers for the common 
purposes of the Union, prohibitions of certain powers to be sternly 
observed, and popular sovereignty guarded by constitutional laws 
were cardinal points of faith with him ; and the good of the whole 
country was or should be the chief end of every patriot. Party 
ends were chief ends of mere partisans. He was no partisan. 
There was no man likely to get the nomination of the Opposi- 
tion with whom he agreed in political opinions. He named 
several spoken of, and said there were several for whom he 
might be compelled to vote, as opposed to Mr. Yan Buren. 
He abhorred him above all pretenders, who based his claim 
upon the spoils of party, victory, and patronage, upon ap- 
pointments to office, and upon jobs to favorites. He named 
Mr Webster, and regretted the jealousies rankling between 
him and Mr. Clay ; then Mr. Clay, General Scott, and General 
Harrison ; saying that the latter would get the nomination, 
and proceeding to state his reasons for the prediction. 

He first disclosed to us what was afterwards called the 
" Triangular Correspondence." New York would control the 
nomination, and the cards in that State were already stocked. 

C , residing in Rochester, S , residing in Utica, and 

T , residing in the city of New York, were to write to one 

another from the three great sections of the State during the 
preliminary and primary State nominations. C. to S. and T. : — 



166 SEVEN DECADES OF THE UNION. 

" Do all you can for Mr. Clay in your district, for I am sorry to 
say that he has no strength in this ;" S. to C. and T., the same ; 
T. to C. and S., the same ; each a professed friend of Mr. Clay, 
and each to be sorry for his having no chance in his district. 

District A was for Clay, but the letters from B and C would 
show he had no chance in them. District B was for Clay, but 
the letters from A and C would show he had no chance in 
them. District C was for Clay, but the letters from A and B 
would show he had no chance in them. A then would say, 
" It is useless for us to send delegates favorable to Mr. Clay, 
for he has no strength in B and C." B would say the same, 
"for he has no strength in A and C." C would say the same, 
"for he has no strength in A and B." 

Thus districts or sections all favorable to Mr. Clay were 
made to elect delegates who were opposed to his nomination. 
By this contrivance Mr. Webster's friends were to obtain dele- 
gates in favor of General Scott, who was to be made the cat's- 
paw to defeat Mr. Clay. But Judge White further predicted 
that this, whilst it would defeat Mr. Clay's nomination, would 
also defeat General Scott's. Scott in this way would get the 
votes of the New York delegation, and this M^ould bring down 
upon him the indignation of the friends of Clay. 

Thus Clay and Scott would both be defeated, and a tertium 
quid, General Harrison, would probably be the nominee, and 
be elected. Judge White begged us to make Mr. Clay understand 
and guard against this ingenious machination. He warned him 
also through us to do all in his power to checkmate this plot 
of the New York cabal, by having the primary nominations 
made early in the summer of 1838, as the Triangular Corre- 
spondence needed time, and would therefore urge an excuse for 
postponement until after the Pennsylvania elections in the fall 
of that year. But he said the warning would be idle, for the 
arrangements of Mr. Clay were already intrusted to parties who 
were co-operating with the plans of his enemies, and of this he 
could not be warned, because he could not be made to distrust 
certain of his professed friends. The primary nominations would 
be postponed, and his nomination would therefore be defeated. 



THE FIFTH DECADE. 161 

He regretted this, because be preferred Mr. Clay to any of the 
others named, yet he could not commit himself to his support, so 
wide apart were they in politics, unless Mr. Clay would consent 
to a practical concurrence with him on certain cardinal points in 
opposition to his heresies of theory. He said the word " Whig" 
was a generic term, that it was adopted expressly to embrace men 
of all political opinions, — Democrats and Federalists, National 
Republicans and old Jackson men of 1824 and 1828, bank men 
and anti-bank men, protective and anti-protective tariff men, 
pro- and anti-internal improvement men, pro- and anti-distribu- 
tion of the proceeds of the sales of the public lands, i)ro- and 
anti-annexation of Texas, pro- and anti-slavery men. If Mr. Clay, 
whatever might be liis abstract opinions as to the powers of Con- 
gress on these cardinal points, would agree to a practical course 
upon them, he could and would support him ; otherwise he 
would not, unless compelled by the necessity of a choice of 
evils. At all events, whether he (Judge White) could support 
him or not at the election, he would give him his influence for 
the AVhig nomination over any of his known and probable 
rivals. He illustrated his meaning of practical concurrence on 
various subjects of theoretical differences between them. A 
United States Bank to be chartered by Congress, he said, was 
a settled question. Practically it should be considered defunct 
until the changes of time or of popular opinion should demand 
a recharter. That the government was obliged to have a fiscal 
agent was true, but it was not obliged to have this form of 
agency. The Treasury Department could itself be organized 
to perform its own functions of fisc, and currency could be 
regulated by laws, indisputable in respect to gold and silver 
and their representatives of private and public credit, and the 
relations of local State banks could be so modified as to sub- 
serve exchange. A national bank in any form was necessarily 
either a danger of great magnitude or a useless contrivance, 
a King Stork or a King Log. It would naturally and there- 
after forever be either a pet power or an ally of an Executive, 
and a great curse united with a popular and unscrupulous 
President ; or it would be an antagonist of the Executive and 



168 SEVEN DECADES OF TUE UNION. 

have to be so cautious of a conflict as to be wholly ineflBcient, 
Credit, private or public, was a sensitive hot-house plant which 
could not sustain the storms of party and political strife, and 
ought never to be exposed to them if it was possible to avoid 
its exposure. It ought to be organized independent of party 
politics and their conflicts. For the Whigs to recharter the 
then late United States Bank would be to bring it directly 
into the whirlpool of party conflict. If united with the new 
Executive, it would be corrupting and dangerous, and if 
Executive power were arrayed against it, it would be made 
useless, as the then late conflict of Jackson with the bank 
had proved. True wisdom, then, as well as party policy, 
required that the Whigs should treat the bank issue as dead, 
at all events for the next presidential term, and for the future 
it should be " left to the arbitrament of enlightened public 
opinion." 

On the subject of the tariff, he said that the only pledge he 
required of Mr. Clay was to adhere to his own plan of the 
Compromise Bill of 1832-33, to gradually reduce the duties on 
protected articles, and to approach as near as practicable to 
a revenue standard, by laying the duties on the unprotected 
articles. 

On the subject of internal improvements by the general govern- 
ment, he demanded that appropriations should cease. The friends 
in Congress of internal improvements had urged appropriations 
for them originally, — first, to aid the Temtories; secondly, 
to stimulate the States to construct their own public works. 
There was no dissension as to the power of aiding the Territo- 
ries, and the States had been so stimulated to construct their re- 
spective works, that they had run into two hundred millions of 
State debts. Policy required a pause until a future time, when 
the national and State debts should be largely reduced, if not 
extinguished. 

He utterly repudiated the distribution of the proceeds of the 
sales of the public lands. They should be made the safety fund 
to keep the army and navy in continual preparation against 
foreign war or domestic insurrection and rebellion, and to leave 



THE FIFTU DECADE. 169 

no pretext for rate of duties and imposts which would be be- 
yond any legitimate purposes of revenue. 

The annexation of Texas had been avoided during the ad- 
ministration of Mr. Van Buren, and Mr. Clay had already 
declared against the acquisition of any more territory. Judge 
White required a pledge on that subject, with a view to preserve 
the balance of power in the Union between the North and the 
South in respect to slavery. 

As tb slavery, he trusted to Mr. Clay's known views and his 
being a senator of a slave State. He knew he would oppose 
the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia, and would 
do his utmost to pacify the agitation of the whole subject of 
abolition. He required pledges on five cardinal points only, 
and said that though Mr. Clay was a latitudiuarian and the 
great leader of the American system, yet, if he would commit 
himself to a practical course on the subjects named, he would 
give him his influence for the nomination and for his election. 

This conference was fully and faithfully reported by us to Mr. 
Clay, and he did distinctly make the pledges required of him by 
Judge White. He emphatically indorsed his views in respect 
to the recharter of the United States Bank, the tariff for protec- 
tion, and the subject of internal improvements. 

This, in turn, was reported to Judge White, and he then 
urged the importance of having a Democratic Republican and 
Strict Construction candidate put upon the ticket of the Yice- 
Presideucy, as the Vice-President might have the casting vote 
of the Senate. John Tyler was the man he preferred ; he had 
been consistent throughout his whole life ; had been nominated 
on the ticket with him in 18-36; had been expunged from the 
Senate ; and the pledge had already been made to place his 
name on the ticket for the Vice-Presidency in order to elect Mr. 
Rives to the Senate in 1838. 

Alas ! already the same fate was ordained for Judge White 
himself. He had offered his resignation to the Governor of 
Tennessee in the fall of 1838 on account of bad health, but it 
was refused. The legislature of Tennessee became Locofoco 
in the winter of 1839, and at once set about instructing Judge 



170 SEVEN DECADES OF THE UNION. 

White out of his seat in the Senate. They passed certain in- 
structions to him, and among others was one to vote in favor 
of the " Sub-Treasury." At once he responded in a letter, of 
September 5, 1839, characterized by his purity and wisdom, 
and causing them to immolate him on. the altar of party sacri- 
fice. On the 13th of January, 1840, the Sub-Treasury bill was 
called up in the Senate, when Judge White addressed the Senate 
in his own vindication and read his letter of reply to the legis- 
lature of Tennessee. It is a master-piece of calm logic, and 
honest, proud defense ; and when its reading was finished he 
bade the Senate a feeling and dignified farewell. He followed 
Mr. Tyler's example ; he could not obey, but recognized the 
right of instruction, and resigned. Thus the nation lost its 
highest exemplar of wisdom, honesty, and purity in public 
service; and on the Hth of January, 1840, a large concourse 
of senators, representatives, and private citizens manifested 
their sense of his worth and of the Senate's loss by a dinner 
given him in Washington City as a last mark of affectionate 
respect. 

In his speech at that dinner he confirmed what we have here 
related. His predictions had been fulfilled. The Triangular 
Correspondence had been successful: the convention to nominate 
a President and Vice-President had been postponed until after 
the Pennsylvania elections ; the friends of Mr. Webster had 
used General Scott's name to defeat the nomination of Mr. 
Clay, and General Scott's nomination was defeated in turn by 
that of General Harrison, in the fall of 1839. Mr. Clay had 
been fully warned of the machinations to defeat him, and would 
not give credence to the friendly caution. He would hardly 
credit the device and its success to the last. In the very hour 
of his defeat he was sitting in a room at Brown's Hotel, anx- 
iously waiting to hear of his nomination. He made most singu- 
lar exhibitions of himself in that moment of ardent expectancy. 

He was open and exceedingly profane in his denunciations of 
the intriguers against his nomination. We had taken two Whig 
friends of our district to see him ; and after they had sat some 
time listening to him, in utter surprise at his remarks, full of 



THE FIFTH DECADE. HI 

tlie most impudent, coarse crimination of others, in words be- 
fitting- only a bar-room* in vulgar broil, of a sudden he stopped, 
and turning to the two gentlemen, who were dressed in black 
and both strangers to him, he said, " But, gentlemen, for aught 
I know, from your cloth you may be parsons, and shocked at 
my words. Let us take a glass of wine." And, rising from his 
seat, he walked to a well-loaded sideboard, at which, evidently, 
he had been imbibing deeply before we entered. 

Thereupon we bowed and took leave. One of the gentlemen, 
after retiring, remarked, " That man can never be my political 
idol again;" and from that time to this he has ceased to admire 
him. In a short time after that he (Mr. Clay) went across the 
Avenue to the parlor of his boarding-house, where he awaited 
the arrival of two of his personal friends, on the night of the 
nomination at Harrisburg, to bring him the news of the final 
proceedings and choice of the Whig Convention. 

We went to the depot and got the intelligence of the nomina- 
tion of General Harrison and Mr. Tyler, and hastened back to 
him with the news. Such an exhibition we never witnessed 
before, and we pray never again to witness such an ebullition 
of passion, such a storm of desperation and curses. He rose from 
his chair, and, walking backwards and forwards rapidly, lifting 
his feet like a horse string-halted in both legs, stamped his steps 
upon the floor, exclaiming, " My friends are not worth the 
powder and shot it would take to kill them 1" He mentioned 
the names of several, invoking upon them the most horrid im- 
precations, and then, turninu' to us, approached rapidly, and 
stopping before us, with violent gesture and 1 ud voice, said, 
" If there were two Henry Clays, one of them would make the 
other President of the United States !" 

Trying to bring him to his senses, we replied, "If there were 
two Henry Clays, the continent would not be large enough to 
hold them, and they would not leave a morsel of each other ; 
they would mutually destroy themselv'S. You were warned 
by Judge White of this result, when it mi ht have been pre- 
vented, but you would not ta e heed!" 

" Ah, yes," said he ; " you and my old fi end Judge White 



172 SEVEN DECADES OF THE UNION. 

are like the old lad j ' who knew the cow would eat up the 
grindstone.' It is a diabolical intrigue, I now know, which has 
betrayed me. I am the most unfortunate man in the history of 
parties: always run by my friends when sure to be defeated, 
and now betrayed for a nomination when I, or any one, would 
be sure of an election." 

From that time forward, through the sessions of '39, '40, '41, 
'42, '43, '44, as long as we remained in the House of Repre- 
sentatives, up to February, 1844, Mr. Clay was excessively in- 
temperate in his habits, and more intemperate in exacerbation 
of temper and in his political conduct. His scene with General 
Scott at a whist-table in Boulanger's restaurant, and with Mr. 
Choate in the Senate-chamber, were but instances of his des- 
peration and of his spite towards those who had defeated his 
nomination. He at times was inapproachable by his friends, 
and his foes chuckled at his self-immolation. At once there 
arose an implacable war, open and declared, between him and 
Mr. Webster. That enmity divided the Whig party into two 
factions, on no difference of opinion or principles at all, but 
purely on personal preferences and partisan predilections. Mr. 
Webster, it was thought by Mr. Clay's friends, was paving his 
way for the succession to General Harrison, and it was obvious 
that Mr. Webster was to have the control of General Harrison's 
administration. 

The defeat of Mr. Clay and the nomination of General Har- 
rison by Mr. Webster's friends, at Harrisburg, determined that 
programme of the Whig party, even before the election in the 
fall of 1840, and certainly before the inauguration of the Presi- 
dent elect in the spring of 1841. 

We must not forget the two great strides of the physical in 
this marked decade, from 1830 to 1840, — the Telegraph of 
Morse, and the "Marine Catapulta" of Commodore James 
Barron, in 1836, from the model of which the idea of the 
" beaked iron-clad Virginia" was derived. 

We presided over the Committee of Naval Affairs in the 
room at the Capitol, in which Morse had his battery and his 
isolated wire to demonstrate his discovery, and where Barron 



THE FIFTH DECADE. \1Z 

exhibited his model of the CatapuUa. From that model we, 
in 1861, from " Rolliston," in the county of Princess Anne, Vir- 
ginia, suggested to General Lee, by letter, the plan of an invul- 
nerable floating battery, from which the Merrimack was con- 
verted into the Virginia. They both have proved how mind 
can make one material monster overcome and destroy another 



CHAPTER IX. 

THE SIXTH DECADE, FROM 18-4:0 TO 18SO. 

Campaign of 1840 — Tippecanoe and Tyler too — Personations of the Divisions 
of the Whig Party — Tyler's expressed Opinions during the Canvass — Dis- 
memberment of the Whig Party before General Harrison's Inauguration — 
General Harrison's Health and Death — Scenes at Washington City — Harri- 
son's Cabinet — " Tyler too" President — What he had to do — The Harrison 
Cabinet retained — Mr. Tyler's Speech as Vice-President — His "Address to 
the People of the United States," and his First Message — Fiscal Bank — Veto 
— Fiscal Corporation — Ewing's Bill — Mr. Clay's Pledges broken — AVhy — 
The Ewing, Sergeant, and Berrien Committee's Interview with Mr. Tyler — 
Mr. Rives's Plan of evading Constitutional Scruples — Mr. Clay's Object to 
force a Veto — Veto Second — Mr. Tyler's Integrity assailed — His Firmness — 
Conditions of Peace tendered to him — Mr. Clay inexorable — Congress im- 
placable — The Harrison Cabinet dissolved — Mr. Webster remains with his 
Credentials in Favor of Mr. Tyler — Disposition to deprive Mr. Tyler of a 
Cabinet by not confirming any of his Nominees — The First Tyler Cabinet. 

The political campaign of 1840 was in all respects the most 
memorabU' ever known to party annals in this country. The 
eclat of General Jackson's name made Mr. Van Buren's elec- 
tion, but could not maintain his administration ; it was crushed 
by its corruption, and the commingling of all elements of the 
Opposition. Democratic and National Republicans, Federalists 
and State Rights partisans, strict constructionists and latitudi- 
narians, Jackson nien and Adams men, Clay men and Calhoun 
men, — all, in a word, united under the motto of " The union of 
the Whigs for the sake of the Union," and made, in the language 
of the celebrated orator of Baltimore, John V. li. McMahon, a 
perfect "avalanche af the people." 

The enthusiasm attending the reception of Lafayette in Balti- 
more in 1824 was not greater than that attending the Conven- 
tion in 1840 of that city to ratify the nomination of " Tippecanoe 
(174) 



THE SIXTH DECADE. l\h 

and Tyler too." Raccoon-skins, and log cabins with the latch- 
strings out, were carried in procession through the land, and 
General Harrison was elected overwhelmingly by a feu de joief 
But Mr. Clay, like Achilles, retired to his tent. He chafed under 
the preference over him of a military chieftain. It was not a 
military chieftain W'ho was preferred, but Mr. Webster's will 
had prevailed against him. But the feeling and causes which 
operated in 1840 were not like those which had operated pre- 
viously in making Richard M. Johnson Vice-President; it was 
uot a Pop Emmons argument of — 

"Rumpsey, Dumpsey, 
Colonel Johnson killed Tecumseh." 

The feeling was of a sound moral tone, and the leading men 
of all sects and sections, and the intelligence of the country, 
united to reform abuses of government and to crush corruption. 
The motto for every flag was, — 

" Tippecanoe ! 
And Tyler too !" 

And in this there was a pointed meaning, intended and ex- 
pressed. General Harrison was denounced by some as a Fed- 
eralist, who favored broad and unlimited powers in the Federal 
government, and for the preference of partisans of that faith he 
was proposed ; but John Tyler was known to be a Democrat 
and Strict Constructionist of the straitest' sect, and to men of 
that faith he was proposed. In other words, the ticket was 
expressly intended for 

"National Republicans in Tippecanoe, 
And Democratic Republicans in Tyler too." 

This was known to all well-informed politicians. 

Mr. Tyler was put into the Yice-Presidency by the friends 
of State Rights and strict construction, avowedly for the 
purpose of casting any tie vote in the Senate of the United 
States in their favor. During the canvass of 1840 his op- 
ponents in the North, hoping to injure his ticket in Pennsyl- 



176 SEVEN DECADES OF THE UNION. 

vania, addressed to him calls for bis avowals, and he made them 
without reserve when he could do so with proper self-respect ; 
and if any of his opinions were withheld from the public they 
were not withheld by himself, but by the leading counselors 
of the Whig party at Washington City, and they withheld 
them on the ground that his opinions were universally known 
to the party and the country to be Democratic Republican and 
that the calls for them were in bad faith, not to found con- 
clusions upon, but to array votes against him. His opinions 
were fully known at the Harrisburg Convention, by men who 
were acquainted with the whole course and tenor of his long 
political career. He did not commit himself to a Federal 
party or Federal opinions by accepting the nomination, but 
the Whig party committed itself to Democratic principles and 
selected a Democrat to guard them. Even General Harrison 
had denied the charge of Federalism brought against himself, 
and pledged himself to strict construction, especially on the 
Bank question.* 

In 1822 and in 1836, General Harrison, in his speeches in 
the Cincinnati district, in a letter to Judge Berrien, and in a 
speech at Vincennes, had fully expressed his political opinions ; 
and during the canvass of 1840, his speech at Dayton and his 
letter to Sherrod Williams committed him to Deniocratic meas- 
ures and to strict construction of the Constitution as to the 
bank, a protective tariff, the expediency of internal improve- 
ments by the' Federal government, and the veto. As to Mr. 
Tyler's part, he was too thoroughly committed by the whole of 
his political course to be doubted ; but he was interrogated with 
scrutinizing opposition, and in every possible form referred to 
his votes from 1812 to 1813, and from 1832 to 1840, on the 
right of instruction and the duty of obedience, on the bank and 
veto, on his casting vote in the Senate upon the latter question, 
on a protective tariff, internal improvement, and abolition of 
slavery in the District of Columbia. In his reply to certain 
citizens of Henrico County, Virginia, Tilmon E. Jeter, Philip 

* See chapter viii. of his Life, by Abell. 



THE SLXTH DECADE. 17^ 

Mayo, and others, dated October 16, 1840, he was explicit in 
adhering to his past course of opposition to those measures by 
the Federal government. These answers were repeated in his 
published letter of the 5th of October, 1840, saying in relation 
to the bank, " My opinion of the power of Congress to charter a 
bank remains unchanged" (from opinions acted upon by him in 
1819 and in 1832). Again, in a letter to Democratic citizens 
of Pittsburg, he reiterated his unyielding opposition to the re- 
cliarter of the bank. He wrote, during the session of 1839-40, 
from Williamsburg, saying that a meeting of the Democrats of 
Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, had demanded of him whether he 
would in any event sanction the incorporation of a United 
States Bank. He inclosed their proceedings and resolutions, 
and also his reply, to Washington City, with instructions to 
submit his reply to the leading members of the Whig party, for 
them to determine whether it should be forwarded and published 
or not. After examining the right of all citizens to call for his 
sentiments on public questions, and claiming that the object of 
such calls should always be to cause the electors to cast their 
votes intelligently, by enlightening them as to the true opinions 
of candidates, he expressed the opinion which he ever enter- 
tained, "that a Bank of the United States was unconstitutional," 
and declared that he would not sanction the incorporation of one 
without an alteration of the Constitution. He .then emphatically 
asked whether, if these were their own sentiments, they would 
maintain them by voting for him at the polls, or whether it was 
their object to divide the Whig party by publishing them to the 
country. 

This reply was submitted to the leading Whigs in Congress, 
and they decided that it would be impolitic to publish it ; that 
Mr. Tyler's opinions were already too well known, through his 
speeches and votes, to need a response, and that it would be un- 
wise to array them directly against the opinions of many Whigs, 
perhaps a majority of the party, who were in favor of a bank. 

Thus the leaders of the Whig party confessed their scien- 
ter of what his course would be, and decided that his opinions 
were too well known to leave a pretext for the charge that 

12 



178 SEVEN DECADES OF THE UNION. 

he had practiced any concealment or deception. This was after 
the nomination and before the election. The Whig leaders all 
knew what he would do. But a large portion of the Whig 
party, especially the Whig State Convention in Virginia, pro- 
claimed, in their address at Richmond, the exact opinions of 
Democracy, — State Rights, strict construction, anti-bank and 
anti-internal improvement and anti-protective tariff, and out-and- 
out the Democratic Republican tenets, — and pledged General 
Harrison as well as Mr. Tyler to their profession of political faith. 
Mr. James Lyons, an eminent lawyer, and a visitor of William 
and Mary, now living, was the author of the address of the 
Whig Convention of 1840 ; and that address speaks for itself. 

Thus the opinions of Mr. Tyler were well and fully known to 
be those of his whole past life, and the Whig party, so far as he 
was concerned, indorsed them by the Whig Convention and by 
the election in 1840. There was no rational pretext, no moral 
excuse whatever, for accusing him afterwards of treachery to 
the party in being true to himself and his ever-cherished Demo- 
cratic principles. The party, on the contrary, was treacherous 
to him, but, instead of crushing him, became divided against 
itself, and fell/<yZo de se. 

The election of 1840, we repeat, was decisive; it overwhelmed 
Van Burenism and the spoils ; but then immediately the vic- 
torious party became dismembered. It had in itself the seeds 
of destruction. It was composed, as we have seen, originally of 
men of every shade of political opinion, and the old Federal 
element of National Republicanism, the Adams and Clay Whigs, 
being in the majority, thought it had the right to dictate and 
prescribe the principles and policy of the administration. But 
the men who composed that element were divided into the Clay 
and Webster factions. Mr. Webster was willing to abide by the 
status of the Opposition before the nomination and election, but 
Mr. Clay was bent on pressing upon him the extreme measures 
of the National Republican school, — bank, tariff, and all. This 
was the motive of the war at first : it was aimed at Mr. Webster 
rather than at Mr. Tyler. As Mr. Clay was not nominated, he 
seemed to consider himself absolved from all the committals he 



THE SIXTH DECADE. 179 

had made to Judge White ; and whether he so considered him- 
self or not, or was so absolved or not, he certainly violated all 
committals he had made practically to adhere to the Democratic 
policy and principles. Judge White's speech at the dinner given 
him, on his retirement from the Senate, at Washington, January 
1*1, 1840, alluded to these pledges of Mr. Clay in a way which 
he and we understood perfectly well. Judge White then said, 
" Since the respective parties have agreed upon their candidates 
(Van Buren and General Harrison), I have, among you, said 
nothing as to whom I should prefer. Upon this subject I do 
not wish to be non-committal. Neither of the gentlemen named 
would have been my choice. I would greatly have preferred the 
distinguished gentleman from Kentucky now near me." (Mr. 
Clay bowed ; the whole company arose as by one impulse, and 
gave three deafening cheers. Judge White proceeded: "Upon 
some sul)jects he and I did not agree ; but upon some points I 
disagree with the present chief magistrate also. Most of these 
points have now ceased to be practical. Upon the great subjects 
now practical I coincide heartily with that gentleman (Mr. Clay), 
and disagree with the present incumbent. Had he continued a 
candidate, I would have given him a cordial support." 

Mr. Clay himself knew to what Judge White alluded in these 
remarks, and so did we, as has already been explained. He had 
committed himself in limine to the principles proclaimed in the 
Whig address of Virginia, drafted by Mr. Lyons. Practically, 
he himself, if he had been nominated, was to have been " anti- 
bank" and Democratic. But, defeated for the nomination, he 
thought himself again free to press upon his adversaries imprac- 
ticable issues, and the blows which he aimed at Mr. Webster 
were caught on the bosses of the buckler of John Tyler. 

After the election in 1840, the disjecta membra of the Whig 
party rushed pell-mell to Washington, every man with a rac- 
coon's tail in his hat, and tugged at the string of the latch, out 
at the White House door, as if sure enough it was a log cabin. 

General Harrison himself got to the capital some months 
before his inauguration, and it cost him his life. He was very 
infirm, and the excitement was too great for him. He yielded 



180 SEVEN DECADES OF THE UNION. 

to the " vulgar crowd," was elated by their pressure upon him, 
and literally sank under a total derangement of his nervous 
system. 

Mr. Tazewell, of Norfolk, had predicted the event of his death, 
playfully commenting upon the unparalleled luck of Mr. Tyler ; 
but sadly he might have foreseen the speedy fulfillment of his 
prophecy if he had been in Washington a week after General 
Harrison's arrival there. He would have seen him in a high 
state of exaltation, and agitated to a degree which could not 
but break him down physically and mentally. We witnessed 
scenes at and before the inauguration of 1841 which it is to be\ 
hoped will never be described by either biography or history. 

The mode of forming the Cabinet made some shocking reve- 
lations, and, in one of the scenes which brought us into imme- 
diate contact with General Harrison and the delegations in 
Congress from the Southeastern States, it was our duty to keep 
a diary and make a report, which shall never be published, 
touching the appointments in General Harrison's Cabinet. 

The signs of the dismemberment of the Whig party were 
apparent, and ought to have warned it not to ride like a beggar 
who had just got a horse to ride. We urged the party watch- 
word of the "Union of the Whigs for the sake of the Union." 
But no; they were then in power by a hurrah of the people; 
they, the old-line Whigs or National Republicans of Adams 
and Clay, had a majority of the party, ruled the caucus, the 
caucus should rule the party, and the party should rule the 
country! This rallied the State Rights men and Democrats of 
the party, of whom Mr. Tyler was one, and we prepared to 
resist the rush of the host of Federalism which we saw 
thronging around the new President. Heaven saved him 
from the fate of ActiBon ; for, had he lived until Congress 
met, he would have been devoured by the divided pack of his 
own dogs. 

He was inaugurated on the 4th of March, 1841, and one 
month thereafter, on the 4th of April, he was a corpse, dying 
"full of years and full of honors." The Tippecanoe part was 
gone, but the " Tyler too" part of the Whig party was, by the act 



THE SIXTH DECADE. 181 

of God, left iu power. The party was pledged to " Tyler too," but 
time showed how its leaders kept their faith to him and made 
good their professions before the election. They scouted their 
own proclamations and programm.es ; the majority of the {tarty 
turned to the Federalism of National Republicanism, and de- 
manded that Mr. Tyler should desert his lifelong faith of De- 
mocracy and strict construction, and sanction both a national 
bank and a protective tariS", and a wilder system of internal 
improvements than had ever before been dreamed of, until the 
Northwest got so strong that no party could offer resistance to 
its demoralizing clamor for appropriations of the public lands. 
Traitorous to their own nomination, traitorous to Mr. Tyler, with 
a full scienter of what he was pledged to do both before and after 
his nomination for the Yice-Presidency, the very moment that 
he became President they forced upon him measures which they 
knew he could not conscientiously or consistently sanction, and 
then cried out, " Traitor ! traitor!" But we are anticipating. 

Immediately after the inauguration of General Harrison we 
bad gone home to the Eastern Shore of Yirginia. At the 
Northampton Circuit Court we heard of the death of General 
Harrison, and immediately hurried to Washington. 

Mr. Tyler needed counsel as to the dangers which environed 
him. The most momentous questions of public policy were 
coming upon the administration ; the Cabinet had not been 
appointed by himself, was not intimate with his own political or 
personal views, and was divided against itself. The great North- 
eastern question threatened our relations with Great Britain ; 
the question of annexing Texas was fast approaching; the ques- 
tion of land distribution was up for. consideration ; fiscal relations 
had to be newly formed ; daily the subject of abolition became 
more and more threatening; and not only was the Cabinet 
divided between the Webster and the Clay faction, but it was 
too clear not to be guarded against that Mr. Tyler's Democratic 
Republican sentiments were necessarily to be brought into col- 
lision with the Federalism of the majority of the Whig party. 
He was advised at once to form a new Cabinet, to hasten a set- 
tlement with Great Britain, and, with that view, to retain Mr. 



182 SEVEN DECADES OF THE UNION. 

"Webster at the bead of the new Cabinet, to annex Texas as soou 
as possible, to veto any recharter of a United States Bank, any 
tariff" for protection, and any bill for the distribution of the pro- 
ceeds of the sale of the public lands. He concurred in every 
proposition except that of dismissing the then existing Cabinet. 
He was told that he would be obliged to do it at last, and that 
it would be most peaceful and politic to do it at once. But his 
disposition was always for conciliation, and he dreaded to offend 
any one as much as Uncle Toby did to hurt a fly. He endeav- 
ored to win the Cabinet by giving its members his confidence, 
forgetting that one half of it, for Mr. Clay, was watching the 
other half, for Mr. Webster. The Cabinet could not have been 
kept together in harmony under General Harrison had he lived. 
But it was retained by Mr. Tyler, and the apprehended conse- 
quences followed. 

On the 17th of March, 1841, General Harrison had issued a 
proclamation convening Congress on the 31st of the following 
May, to consider sundry weighty and important matters, "prin- 
cipally growing out of the condition of the revenue and finances 
of the country." 

On the 4th of March, 1841, Mr. Tyler, as Vice-President, 
appeared, qualified, and took his seat as President of the Senate, 
and in the address which he uttered was heard distinct and 
clear the ring of the old Democratic faith which he and his father 
before him had ever cherished. His definition of the true con- 
servatorial character of the Senate, and of the duties devolving 
upon it under the Constitution, as the representative of States, 
to carry out their sovereign will by which the Federal govern- 
ment had been spoken into existence, — the equality of States in 
this Confederacy, "guardians of the institutions established by 
the fathers against popular impulse or executive encroachments, 
holding the balance in which are weighed the powers conceded 
to the Federal government and the rights reserved to the States 
and the people," — bis prophecy that if ever faction should 
seize the Senate, and it should forget its duties, " then would 
our political institutions be made to topple to their foundations," 
— and his appeal for " liberty intrenched in safety behind the 



THE SIXTH DECADE. 183 

sacred ramparts of the Constitution," — all showed to which part 
of the Whig' party he belonged, and that in becoming- a Whig' 
in opposition to Van Burenism he had not ceased to be what he 
had ever been, a Democratic, Strict Construction, State Rights, 
Constitution-loving Republican. His very first effort was an 
appeal against Federalism and for a faithful adherence to the 
Constitution, and he had repeatedly spoken and voted against 
violating the Constitution by chartering a J3ank of the United 
States. Thus he was committed from first to last in his 
political course, when, by the act of God, he was called to 
take the Presidency. And thus committed to principles, and 
placed in power, he met the Congress. Before the Congress 
assembled, lie had published an "Address to the People of the 
United States." He appealed to them to sustain the "wisdom 
and sufficiency of our institutions under the new test" of 
the office of President for the first time devolved upon a Vice 
President. 

It was an opportunity for faction to operate and effect great 
mischief, and he pledged himself to the people "understandingly 
to carry out the principles of that Constitution which he had 
sworn to protect, preserve, and defend. " He would guard against 
the concentration of power in his hands, and preserve a " com- 
plete separation between the sword and the purse" of the nation. 
He deprecated the patronage of office to control and keep the 
public moneys in the hands of the Executive. He deprecated 
also a public debt in time of peace, and urged economy in the 
public expenditure, with a view to the smallest revenue to be 
exacted by taxation only for objects of absolute usefulness and 
necessity. He urged that all war between the government and 
the currency of the country should cease. He declared his 
opposition to the then existing measures of finance, the Sub- 
Treasury, and recommended their repeal. He promised his 
sanction to "any constitutional measure which, originating in 
Congress, should have for its object the restoration of a sound 
circulating medium," but suggested no measure of his own, 
because he thought financial and fiscal measures should origi- 
nate in the Congress. At the same time, he expressly warned 



184 SEVEN DECADES OF THE UNION. 

the people and the Congress that "in deciding upon the adap- 
tation of any such measure to the end proposed, as well as its 
conformity to the Constitution, he would resort to the fathers 
of the grPMt Republican school for advice and instruction to be 
drawn from their sage views of our system of government and 
the light of their ever-glorious example." 

This was directly saying that he would not sanction a bank 
charter. 

Every one knew what were the doctrines of "the fathers of 
the great Republican school," what he had said and voted 
during a long congressional and legislative career, and what 
he had published and repressed before and during the canvass 
for the Presidency To demand of him to sign a United States 
Bank charter was to ask him to sacrifice the symmetrical coa- 
sistency of his wliole public life, violate every pledge which 
he had made to the people, and break the oath which he had 
taken to " protect, preserve, and defend" the Constitution of 
the United States. Yet the Whig leaders, knowing all this, 
did make that demand upon his conscience and self-respect, 
and cried out, " Traitor ! traitor !" upon him, because he would 
not consent to be forsworn ! 

Not only did his address to the Senate and his address 
to the people of the United States indicate a veto of any 
United States Bank charter, but his first message to Congress, 
June 1, 1841, disclosed expressly his antagonism to a United 
States Bank, to the State banks, and to the Sub-Treasury, 
each and all, as fiscal agents of the government. As to the 
first, he distinctly informed Congress that be regarded the people 
as having sustained the veto ; as to the second, it had signally 
failed; and as to the third, the very last election by the people 
had decided that it should be overthrown and something better 
than either system be substituted by Congress. What that 
substitute should be, must be left to Congress, as belonging to 
the legislative province. 

He promised to concur in such a system as Congress might 
propose, "expressly reserving to himself, however, the ultimate 
power of rejecting any measure ivhich might, in his view of it, 



THE SIXTH DECADE. 185 

conflict loith the Constitution, or otherwise jeopard tlie pros- 
perity of the country; a power wliich he could not part with 
even if he would, but which he would not believe any act of 
Congress would call into requisition." 

Thus warned, and thus appealed to, not to press any measure 
upon his power to veto, the Congress held the cup of a " fiscal 
bank" to his lips, and endeavored to make him drink its very 
dregs, and, failing in that, made him endure all the bitterness 
of unjust and uimiitigated abuse for exercising a virtuous con- 
stancy with a Roman firmness, which should have excited naught 
but respect and admiration. 

But there was a double mistake made in respect to the char- 
acter of the man. One faction of his enemies, really desiring a 
bank charter, supposed he was wanting in nerve, and that he 
would be afraid to meet the odium of those of his party who 
clamored for a bank ; and the other faction, Mr. Clay at its head, 
fearing that he might succeed in having submitted to him a 
constitutional measure to manage the fisc, the currency, and the 
revenue better than any system yet tried, and that he might 
be a favorite in the election of 1844, were determined to extort 
from him a veto of a United States Bank charter, in order to 
make him odious to a majority of the Whigs. And if they did 
not fear the rivalry of Mr. Tyler, they did fear that of the chief of 
his Cabinet, Mr. Webster. They were afraid of one or both ; and 
therefore Mr. Clay chose to forget his pledge to Judge White, 
to " abide by the arbitrament of an enlightened public opinion," 
which had signally sustained General Jackson's veto of a United 
States Bank charter. 

Mr. Tyler had submitted the measure to Congress, and the 
Senate called upon Mr. Ewing, the Secretary of the Treasury, 
to present a plan by means of which the fiscal concerns of gov- 
ernment might be managed and the currency of the country 
regulated. Mr. Tyler had submitted no plan of his own to Con- 
gress, for the reasons already stated, but formed a general out- 
line of a measure which, while restricted to the special purposes 
of the fisc, would, without being a bank with power of discount, 
regulate the exchange, check the over-issuing of the State bank- 



186 SEVEN DECADES OF THE UNION. 

iug system, regulate currency, and protect the public credit and 
finances and revenue against the dreaded fluctuations and 
shocks of the money-market and of commerce ; and this plan 
was within the powers expressly granted of coining money and 
regulating the value thereof, and of regulating commerce be- 
tween tl]e United States and foreign nations, and between the 
several States. In a word, his idea was that of an exchequer, of 
purely governmental use and purpose of the fisc and of revenue, 
incidentally only regulating the standard of value for private 
and individual trade and commerce. These views he presented 
to Mr. Ewing, who faithfully consulted the President, the Cabi- 
net, and the best minds in the Congress and in the country. 
He presented his plan, which, however it may have been objec- 
tionable to Mr. Tyler, was never fairly considered. It was 
smothered in a committee, and a charter for a national bank, 
under the name and style of a " Federal Bank," was passed, and 
vetoed by the President. The veto treated the measure as one 
proposing the recharter of the United States Bank. Mr. Clay 
had obtained the desired veto, and sought to adjourn and make 
up the issue of bank or no bank ; but the devotees of the re- 
charter of the bank resisted his movements, and endeavored to 
circumvent the President's objections by another mode of dis- 
guising theii* favorite measure. 

Tljey called the thing by another name, that of "Fiscal Cor- 
poration," and affected to make it conform to an exchequer, — to 
something created by government for its own uses alone, those 
of finance and revenue. Every attempt was made to persuade 
and drive Mr. Tyler into the sanction of this modification. They 
rated his intellect so low as to suppose that the name "bank'''' 
was his dread, and that his scruples might be overcome by adopt- 
ing the term "corporation" — not regarding the distinction as a 
weight against their wishes. The power of incorporation was 
the very power which he denied. The government might act 
by officers, appointed or elected, or by agents already created or 
existing, or might exercise its legitimate, granted powers by 
them; but could it create agencies to combine political powers 
and uses with individual and private powers and uses? That 



THE SIXTH DECADE. 18T 

was what, from the first Cabinet of Washington, had been de- 
bated between statesmen, down to the year 1841. 

Thus, relying upon Mr. Tyler's supposed softness and pliancy, 
tL^ name of '' Fiscal Corporation" was adopted by the friends 
of the bank in this last effort to obtain a charter. So far as 
constitutional principles were concerned, there was, in fact, no 
difference between the two measures. A caucus committee 
of several eminent men, among whom were Mr. Jolin Sergeant, 
of the House of Representatives, and Mr. Berrien, of the Senate, 
was appointed to confer with Mr. Evving, the Secretary of the 
Treasury, and with the President, on this measure. 

In the mean time Mr. Rives, who had sustained Mr. Tyler's 
first veto, brought his influence to bear upon the consideration 
of the second or Fiscal Corporation bill. Mr. Rives had formed 
a theory of creating a bank for the District of Columbia, under 
the local power of Congress over the district, making it the 
central and controlling depository of the public money, and 
enabling it to exercise all the influence of the other i)lans upon 
exchange and currency, on the principle settled in the case of 
the Bank of Augusta (Ga.) against Earle. 

His arguments and persuasions for awhile staggered Mr. 
Tyler, so far as to cause the President to call some select friends 
to meet Mr. Rives in conference with him as to Mr. Rives's plan 
of gratifying the Whigs by a measure reconcilable with consti- 
tutional requirements. 

Mr. Rives was exceedingly cautious in opening his views at 
this conference, but at last gradually explained them fully before 
any remark was made or any objection was urged against them. 
Mr. Tyler was strongly impressed by the ingenious plan of Mr. 
Rives ; and this occurring at the time when Mr. Ewing, Mr. 
Sergeant, and Mr. Berrien were waiting upon the President to 
ascertain how, if at all, the first bill might be remodeled and 
modified into a second which would obtain his sanction, the 
J'resident did attempt to reconcile the plan of Mr. Rives with 
that of the Secretary of the Treasury as changed by Mr. Ser- 
geant. It was at this precise juncture that the misunder- 
standing occurred between Mr. Tyler on the one part, and Mr. 



ISS SEVEN DECADES OF THE UNION. 

Ewing, Mr. Sergeant, and Mr. Bei-rien on the other part, as to 
what modifications would meet the President's approval. This 
result was apprehended, from what was known of the bill drafted 
by Mr. Sergeant and of the plan of Mr. Rives. We knew that 
the President would submit for consideration bj the Whig com- 
mittee the compromising modifications suggested by Mr. Rives, 
and that they could not be reconciled with scruples as to the 
power of Congress to incorporate a bank. It was not a question 
of mere " discount and deposit," but one of constitutional power 
of incorporation ; and a " fiscal corporation" was a very different 
thing from a local bank of the District of Columbia, with the 
resulting power of exchange. As soon as the committee left, 
Mr. Tyler communicated to us the result of his interview with 
them, — Messrs. Ewing, Sergeant, and Berrien. He informed 
us that he had submitted to them certain modifications, founded 
on the suggestions of Mr. Rives, and that they were to draw a 
bill in conformity thereto, and to submit the draft to him, as a 
plan of compromise. We assured him that such was not the 
understanding of Mr. Sergeant ; his idea was that the Presi- 
dent would be content with much less modification than that 
which he really intended. Mr. Sergeant, who had charge of 
the second bill, would insist on the power of incorporating 
banking privileges coextensive with the United States ; and 
with that as a foundation principle, he, the President, notwith- 
standing the details of modifications, would at last be callp'^l 
on to yield his scruples as to the constitutional power of Cou» 
gress to create a bank. The President was surprised that any 
one who had conferred with him could mistake his views or re- 
solves in respect to the question of power. We assured him 
that the Whig leaders were determined to have the power con- 
ceded by him, or to force upon him the odium of a veto ; that 
Mr. Clay desired the latter, in order to remove both him and 
Mr. Webster from all rivalry for the next presidential term, 
and that his leading friends, Mr. Sergeant especially, cared 
more for the concession of power to create a United States 
Bank than they did even for the success of their favorite 
3audidate for the Presidency, Mr. Clay ; that Mr. Sergeant 



THE SIXTH DECADE. 189 

would insist on the concession of power to have the bill ap- 
proved, whilst Mr. Clay would insist upon it to have the bill 
vetoed ; that to incorporate a bank would be to violate the 
pledges and committals of the Whig party and of himself for 
his lifetime ; but, if he had modified or changed his views, we 
urged upon him in that case to follow the example of Mr. 
Madison, in 1816, — to waive all constitutional scruples and to 
sign an efficient charter ; that it was not less impolitic than 
inconsistent to approve of any " mongrel scheme" like that 
even of Mr. Rives, and the " Fiscal Corporation" bill was 
nothing but a United States Bank in disguise, as to every con- 
stitutional objection to it, whilst it was encumbered by pro- 
visions seemingly only to avoid the question of constitutionality, 
which would make it inefficient ; that if he would sign an act 
of incorporation at all, he would do himself most justice by 
signing an efficient charter which would be most useful both to 
the government and to the country. He concurred fully in these 
views, and I'equested us to see Mr. Sergeant at once and to say 
to him he wished him explicitly to understand that he would 
sign no bill which conceded the power in Congress to create a 
national bank in any form, — that he would accede to any plan 
which might be agreed upon within the pale of the Constitu- 
tion, but that he would not be held committed to the bill of 
the " Fiscal Corporation" unless it was modified so as to re- 
move the constitutional objections. This was on the day before 
the bill was submitted to the House of Representatives, and 
on that day the message of the President was delivered to Mr. 
Sergeant. He was informed fully of the President's views, and 
they were explained to him distinctly, — that he did not wish to 
be considered as committed to the bill which Mr. Sergeant had 
in charge, and, if he was so understood, he desired the mistake 
to be corrected before it was reported ; that he could not con- 
sent to sign the bill in the form in which it was last presented 
to him. Mr. Sergeant received the message without uttering a 
word of comment; he simply acknowledged its receipt, made 
no inquiries, bowed, and went to his committee. 
The next morning the " Fiscal Corporation" bill was reported 



190 SEVEy DECADES OF THE UNIOy. 

by bim to the House, and was immediately acted upon without 
debate. He himself was not allowed to explain fully the 
reasons for changing the title of the bill* from " Fiscal Bank" 
to " Fiscal Corporation" before the hammer of the Speaker fell 
upon the debate, and the bill was rushed through both Houses. 
Then the war upon Mr. Tyler became appalling : he was dared, 
as it were, not only to withstand the clamoi's of the Federal 
Whigs for the United States Bank, but to go counter to the 
understanding he had had, as was alleged, with Messrs. Ewing, 
Sergeant, and Berrien. John Tyler's intelligence and integrity 
were then tried to the uttermost, and he proved himself firm as 
truth itself to the Constitution, looking fully in the face dangers 
enough to appall any man not fortified by virtue, as he was, 
and which assailed his personal honor and veracity as a man, as 
well as blasted every political hope he may have had in the 
party which elected him. The bill was passed on the 4th of 
September, 1841, and on the 9th of the same month he re- 
turned it with his second veto. 

He paused for consultation, but had no Cabinet advisers who 
concurred with him. He had to confer with friends outside of 
his Cabinet, and, after a final conference, instructed a friend, who 
was familiar with all his views and all the facts as to the prep- 
aration of the second bill, to prepare his second veto, which was 
done in his presence, and which, with but few modifications by 
himself, is that now among the public archives. The veto thus 
prepared was then submitted to the Cabinet. He expressed the 
most anxious solicitude to meet the wishes of Congress, avoid- 
ing all constitutional objections ; he deplored the want of time 
to submit a definite recommendation of his own, and had occupied 
his mind in the most anxious attempt to conform his action to the 
legislative will ; and he most respectfully submitted, in a spirit of 
harmony, that the measure should not at that time be pressed 
upon him, but that the whole subject should be po.stponed to a 
more auspicious period for deliberation. While this veto mes- 
sage was being considered, he received an intimation from the 
Whig leaders that if he would not disturb any member of his 
Cabinet, the bill might be postponed to the regular session of 



THE SIXTH DECADE. 191 

Congress. One member of the Cabinet who retired, did not desire 
to do so, and complained that he was forced to retire by the 
personal demands and influence of Mr. Clay. At a meeting of 
the members of the Cabinet, all except Mr. Webster, to deter- 
mine upon their course, Mr. Clay was present, and demanded of 
them to resign. The matter was seriously debated ; Mr. Bell, of 
Tennessee, was opposed to the retirement, and desired that the 
subject of the bank might be postponed, on condition that in 
the mean time no hostile movements should be made on the 
Cabinet; and Mr. Crittenden himself, supposed to be most 
under the influence of Mr. Clay, playfully inquired whether he 
might not in honor remain until the stock of wines he had laid 
in was consumed ; but Mr. Clay was inexorable. And while 
the second veto was pending before the Cabinet, the President 
submitted to them that he should announce to Congress his 
abnegation of all pretensions to, or aspirations for, the succes- 
sion, and his resolve to retire at the expiration of his term, 
and every member present protested against any such announce- 
ment ; yet he added to the veto this memorable paragraph : " I 
will take this occasion to declare that the conclusions to which 
I have brought myself are those of a settled conviction, founded, 
in my opinion, on a just view of the Constitution ; that, in 
arriving at it, I have been actuated by no other motive or de- 
sire than to uphold the institutions of the country as they have 
come down to us from the hands of our godlike ancestors; and 
that I shall esteem my efforts to sustain them, even though I 
perish, more honorable than to ivin the applause of men by a 
sacrifice of my duty and of my conscience^ 

The Congress was implacable: the Whig leaders "held the 
second cup of bank or no bank" to the President's lips; he 
would make no compromise of his principles, would sacrifice 
neither his duty nor his conscience, would make no bargain in 
respect to retaining his Cabinet, but fearlessly vindicated him- 
self from the aspersion that he was governed by ambitious mo- 
tives, or that he was -false and treacherous, and put "the 
applause of men" behind him in his defense of his "settled 
convictions, founded," in his opinion, "on a just view of the 



192 SEVEN DECADES OF THE UNION. 

Constitution ;" and in twenty-four days from the 1st, he sent to 
Clay, " with a Senate at his heels," and to King Caucus, with 
Congress under his reign, his second veto ! 

This proved potentially that he was no "nose of wax," but 
a firm, immovable lover of the Constitution, a fearless patriot, 
a wise and sagacious statesman, and an honest man. The 
Harrison-appointed Cabinet at once, under the force of Mr. 
Clay, dissolved. From all this intrigue, Daniel Webster alone 
kept himself grandly aloof; he had naught to do with Mr. 
Clay's cabal ; his own opinions were unmoved as to the power 
to create a bank, but, knowing Mr. Tyler's convictions and scru- 
ples to be as unmoved, he could not, with proper respect to 
Mr. Tyler or himself, advise him to violate the consistency of 
his whole life by approving a bill which deceitfully and cun- 
ningly professed only to evade constitutional objections and 
conscientious scruples. He knew that the blows were intended 
by Mr. Clay and his friends for him as well as for Mr. Tyler, 
and they had won the mutual confidence and admiration of 
each other ; and he kept the bickerings of cabal and caucus and 
the clamors of party factions away from him, knowing that the 
country had great affairs to be administered, and he calmly and 
dignifiedly attended, among other great measures, to the settle- 
ment of the Northeastern Boundary question with Great Britain. 
The rest of the Cabinet retired, knowing full well that if they 
had not bowed themselves out they would have been shown 
the door. It was a mutual separation between them and Mr. 
Tyler. It was a cordial union between him and Mr. Webster ; 
that itself is the highest credential .of Mr. Tyler's integrity 
against all contradiction. Webster manfully remained by an 
honest President, and sustained him by his example against 
all aspersion and persecution. It was one of the sublimest 
actions of his great life. He, too, made a sacrifice in remaining 
despite the clamor of the major faction of those who concurred 
with him in opinion upon a bank against Mr. Tyler. The 
policy of Mr. Clay was to separate both Mr. Tyler and Mr. 
Webster from the great body of the Whig party, and the 
expectation was that the two standing alone could not make 



THE SIXTH DECADE. 193 

up another Cabinet, and that both would have to retire from 
the task of carrying on the government. How he " reckoned 
without his host" events immediately showed. There were 
ready at hand new men, unhackneyed politicians of the best 
caliber, far superior in qualifications to those who had retired. 
Webster himself remained the same Daniel Webster; Abel P. 
Upshur, John C. Spencer, Robert Wickliffe, Hugh L. Legare, 
and Walter Forward (?) were called, as it were, from their homes 
in the country. Not one of them was blaae with Washington 
City politics, parties, factions, or feuds. Such a Cabinet before 
or since has never been formed in the United States, for either 
natural powers or cultivation in law and letters, and for ex- 
perience in the applied science of government. Each was 
mighty, and it is hard to say which was mightiest ; each was 
a full peer of Webster, and we would like to know another 
Cabinet of which that can be said. • 

13 



CHAPTER X. 

THE SIXTH DECADE, FROM 1840 TO 1850. 

The Cabinet — Mr. Webster; his Social Conversation — Daniel Wise — Hon. A. P. 
Upshur — T. R. Joynes — Trial of the Gibbses — The Figure of Arithmetic and 
of Rhetoric — Mr. J. C. Spencer — Mr. Wickliffe — Mr. Legare — Error in his 
Biography — Retirement of Spencer and Webster — Death of Legare — Second 
Session of the Twenty-seventh Congress — Its Measures — The Bank Bills — 
The Exchequer — Act for the Distribution of the Sales of the Public Lands, 
and the Tariff, and their Veto — Report of Mr. Adams's Committee, and the 
Protest — Mr. Thomas W. Gilmer — Dorr Rebellion — Impeachment — Loss of 
Mrs. Tyler — Persecution and Composure of Mr. Tyler — The Cabinet renewed. 

Op Mr. Webster's public life nothing need here be said. His 
private intercourse was even more attractive than his position 
as a statesman was commanding. He was, when in the right 
mood, the most genial of companions, and his conversation was 
more delightful and instructive than his speeches or orations. 
On one occasion we went into the Senate-chamber, and were 
standing alone in the lobby, listening to some dull debate ; he 
was sitting in his usual place, not occupied, and hardly attend- 
ing to what was going on, but thoughtful, and, as was his habit 
when musing, pulling one of his ears. It was a singular idiosyn- 
crasy ; and we often asked ourself, Is there any sympathy be- 
tween his ear and his brain ? Does the friction of the one excite 
the other ? If so, what an electric ear his must have been 1 

As we were looking at him, he caught our eye, rose imme- 
diately from his seat, came to where we were, and took us by the 
arm, saving, " Come here." There was a map of the United 
States hanging behind the Vice-President's chair, to which he led 
us and inquired, " Where do you live ? Show me the spot." We 
pointed to the spot of the Eastern Shore, on the Yirginia coast, 
(194) 



THE SIXTH DECADE. 195 

opposite the Metompkin Inlet. " Well," said he, " do you 
ever shoot curlews and will — will — willets ?" We replied, 
"Yes." He then descanted on the habits of those birds, and 
the times of their migration. He said that, at the proper 
season, his custom was to shoot them, ofiFNahant, perhaps, and 
that, according to his calculation of climate and distance, about 
two or three weeks after he began shooting them there they 
migrated to the Virginia coast. "Now," he said, "remember, 
that if you see any crippled ones down your way after about 
that time, they are my birds." This was said with a magic 
geniality, and, without waiting for our reply, he asked, " Where 
did your ancestors come from ?" We told him that our blood 
was half English and half Scotch, — all our paternal ancestors 
came from the North of England, and most of the preepositi 
had been clergymen ; that the only marked man among them 
we had heard of was Sir William Wise, distinguished for his 
wit, whom Henry the Eighth had knighted for gratifying his 
spleen against the French by saying, when asked what the 
phrase fleur-de-lis meant, " It means French lice, sire." He 
laughed, and then gravely told us his reason for asking who 
our ancestors were. Near his father's residence, along the 
New Hampshire coast, dwelt an English pensioner, an old 
ex-warrant officer of the British navy, a bachelor, alone in a 
small fisherman's cot, named Daniel Wise. That his name 
was no lucus a non lucendo, for he was a very Daniel, judge 
indeed of most things, and especially of men, and was exceed- 
ingly good and wise by nature as well as by name ; and was 
the best master of a boat, the most cunning in Ashing craft and 
tackle, and the most inveterate fisherman he ever heard or read 
of, Izaak Walton not excepted. Mr. Webster, when a boy, 
was devoted to fishing, and thus won the heart of " Uncle 
Daniel Wise," who taught him to fix his hook and line and 
bait, and always fondly took him with him in his boat, when- 
ever he was allowed by his mother to venture out upon the 
water. That it was in this fishing companionship with this 
naval pensioner of England, who had, of course, sailed around 
the world and seen all parts and all people, he had first learned 



196 SEVEN DECADES OF THE UNION. 

the love of geography and navigation, and the knowledge of the 
manners and customs and costumes of the different countries and 
people of the world. " Uncle Daniel" was a great observer, 
thoroughly informed of everything he had seen wherever he had 
roamed, and was well read in geography and history, and instead 
oi " >s{)inning mere sailor's yarns," told him sober tales, curious 
and wonderful, but never shocking truth, or decency, or common 
sense. His own private history he would never give him, but 
never tired in narrating the stories of his travels. This first 
excited his fervor ariimi for knowledge, and drew him by a 
pleasant attraction to seek her treasures. He regarded this old 
man, thus communed with alone, as the Nestor of his youth, 
and described him with childlike affection. 

" Did you ever know him, or have you ever heard of such a 
man of that name ?" His description made us know, and want 
to know more of him at once, but we regretted that we had 
never known or heard of him before, and that we could not 
claim a kinship with such a character. He was dead many 
years before, it seemed, and we could never compare genealo- 
gies with him. This little incident first drew us near to Mr. 
Webster, socially, and we were grateful afterwards for any 
opportunity to hear him talk in the same strain, when he was in 
the mood to do it, with his heart as well as with his tongue. At 
such times we preferred listening to his narrations to reading 
Scott's best novels ; so simple, pure, and touching was his 
genial pathos ; his eyes were " great, pathetic eyes," oxlike, 
beaming generous, genial thoughts, gracious and great. Clay 
in comparison with him, socially, was what Tom Marshall 
called him, " a subHme blackguard." 

Abel P. Upshur was born on that peninsula land of Virginia, 
the Eastern Shore, — " the land of the pine and the myrtle." 
He was in his youth the leader of the great rebellion at Prince- 
ton College. His mother was a sister of Colonel Thomas 
Parker, called " Hangman Tom" by the Tories of the Revolu- 
tion, who was captured at the battle of Germantown, in 
Mathew's regiment; and when Earl Harcourt rode along the 
line of rebel prisoners, ragged and worn and drooping, asking 



THE SIXTH DECADE. 197 

each wliat bis occupation bad beea, Lieutenant Tbonias Parker 
stood erect, and, wben bis turn came to tell wbo and what be 
was, replied to tbe question of tbe Earl, saying, " I am as 
my father before me was, a gentleman, and be d — d to you 1 
Wbo are you ?" The Upsburs were of a similar stock of "loyal 
gentlemen." 

Old Dr. Smith, to tbe day of bis death, we are told, never 
failed to speak of Upshur's defense of himself and bis comrades 
for their rebellion at Princeton as one of the finest displays of 
argument and eloquence he bad ever heard. 

After his college career Upshur studied law in tbe office of 
William Wirt, and became imbued with his manners and learn- 
ing. He first settled in Richmond and practiced his profession 
there ; but, with a view to obtaining a seat in Congress, he moved 
to Northampton, on the Eastern Shore, his native county, and, 
failing to be returned to tbe House of Representatives, in Con- 
gress, being beaten by Mr. Bassett, be was afterwards elected to 
tbe House of Delegates of tbe legislature of Virginia. There bp 
became highly distinguished as a debater and orator of tbe first 
water. His speech upon what was called tbe " Marriage Bill," 
to repeal tbe laws prohibiting a man from marrying the sister 
of bis deceased wife, was a signal effort of art and learning in 
debate; and during its heat, wben the celebrated General 
Blackburn, of Bath, rather indecorously and sardonically hinted 
that "our AbeV had interested motives in tbe repeal, because 
the Eastern Shore people, isolated as they were, bad been 
obliged to intermarry among themselves, and that some of 
his own kindred probably required tbe legalization of their 
marriages, Upshur was aroused, and there are persons now 
alive who speak of bis reply as one of the loftiest tone of elo- 
quent invective, — pointed, clear, cutting, and yet in perfect 
ornate order. His retort was painfully polite, but went through 
and through his adversary, and, as be left him prostrate on tbe 
plain, be rose above him to a height inaccessible to most men. 

His forensic displays in encounters with his great rival, 
Thomas R. Joynes, the father of tbe present distinguished 
Judge Joynes, of the Court of Appeals, were splendid. T. R. 



198 SEVEN DECADES OF THE UNION. 

Joyneri was a master in his way, and Upshur was greater 
only in oratory. Joynes was a mathematician, quick, power- 
ful, always to the point, reticent, cautious, and over-laborious. 
He could almost multiply nine figures by nine figures in 
his head, and as quick as thought could give a true state- 
ment of any proportion in the relation of numbers, and, always 
practical, addressed himself to common sense. Upshur was 
more highly cultivated, more ornate and graceful, a metaphysi- 
cian, scholar, logician, and rhetorician. It was a treat to see 
them fence on any subject, great or small. A scene of more 
than common moment occurred between them in the trial of 
the Gibbs brothers for maiming one Hargis. The case was a 
romantic one, and is well remembered on the Eastern Shore, 
having the most peculiar state of facts, which were all fully 
developed on the trial, — a mistress and family of children, a 
marriage in respectable life among strangers in another State, 
the bringing home of the lady-wife, the first visit to church of 
the couple after marriage, a scene there of the mistress breaking 
upon the new-married couple in the procession of church-going 
people and tearing the lace shawl from the shoulders of the bride,, 
that followed by the two youngest brothers of the groom, of eigh- 
teen and twenty years, severely switching the woman for her 
audacious assault, that followed by her brother's attempted 
vengeance upon the youths, and their stabbing and cutting the 
man nearly to death and inflicting permanent wounds, bringing 
them within the statute of mayhem. For this a prosecution 
was instituted against the two youthful Gibbses. Paramour and 
mistress, husband and wife, brothers and sister thus commin- 
gled in a strange confusion of crime, were all in the survey and 
scenery of the case, and the defense gave Upshur full scope for 
all his powers. 

Joynes prosecuted with all his keen precision, presenting 
everything in perfect array for the Commonwealth, summing 
up, first, the whipping of the Magdalen, and contrasting her 
affront to the bride with the brothers' wrong to her, and her 
brother's attempted vengeance upon them with their ven- 
geance on his sister, defiled by their brother, leaving their 



THE SIXTH DECADE. 199 

crime against him naked and without excuse, their youth only 
excusing the cowardice as well as guilt of the two stabbing the 
one. The prosecution was thought unanswerable. But by the 
time Upshur rose to the height of his argument there was a 
whirlwind revolution in the minds of the audience and jury. 
Patrick Henry never carried with him the passions of the people 
with more irresistible force. He had made the marriage relation 
his study in discussing the Marriage Bill before the legislature, 
— its holiness, its mystery, its refinement, its purity, its purpose, 
its delicacy of trust, its exalting and cleansing effect, and its 
sacred inviolability in the sight of God. And this he put before 
the jury with a power and rapture of thoughts and figures 
which made them feel as they had never felt before towards 
holy wedlock. Then upon the crime which assailed and shamed 
holy wedlock, in a crowd, at a church-door, he poured out such 
wrath as carried away every father and brother. The paramour 
himself had not been attacked, but the blameless bride. The 
youths had been merciful ; they had only switched the bold, 
bad harlot, and only stabbed, instead of killing, her avenger, 
who was seeking vengeance for the mere switching of a sister, 
when he had never sought vengeance for her defilement. The 
whole feeling was carried back against the prosecutor, Hargis ; 
and the two Gibbses were acquitted with acclamations. 

After a short practice at the bar he went upon the bench, 
proving himself not a " Nisi Prius" prig, but a large, comprehen- 
sively-profound jurist. He was a member of the State Conven- 
tion of 1829-30 to amend the Virginia Constitution of 17T6. He 
advocated, most erroneously, the mixed basis of representation, 
population and property combined, and lived to confess his error. 
Leigh was the Ajax of that heresy, guided by that miser of 
aristocracy, John Randolph of Roanoke, but Upshur was the 
author of the one surpassing speech which carried the question. 
His law rival, T. R. Joynes, was also a member; and of the 
two Mr. Randolph said, " I had expected the ancient rights 
and charters of Virginia to have been defended by the Taze- 
wells and Trezvants of the south side of the James ; but, 
whilst they have been supine and silent, the fishermen of the 



200 SEV.b:N DECADES OF THE UNION. 

Eastern Shore have proved to be the champions of all that is 
sacred to this Ancient Dominion. Our defense has fallen upon 
that ' figure of arithmetic' of Accomack (Jojnes), and that 
'figure of rhetoric' (Upshur) of Northampton." 

Upshur's review of Judge Story's theory of constitutional 
law fixed his fame. He was no longer an asteroid, but a planet. 
He was in full vigor and known to honor and to fame when 
persuaded to take the place of Secretary of the Navy in the 
first Cabinet appointed by Mr. Tyler. His messages are model& 
of state papers, and beautiful blocks in the monument of his 
• fame. The morning after his first report was sent in, Hugh S. 
Legare stopped us to inquire why that gentleman, Mr. Upshur, 
had not been sent up before by Virginia to magnify her rightful 
claim to a race of pre-eminent men. When told that the reason 
was that the mother State of the greatest men had so many like 
him she could not send all her jewels at once, he said that he 
had read his report once, and that it was so pure in its style, 
so perfect a model of what a message ought to be, that he had 
read it twice before rising from its perusal. 

He was killed at the catastrophe of the Princeton, in 1844, 
while Secretary of State. Had he ever been sent to the Senate 
of the United States, he would have been universally known 
and appreciated at his full worth. Had he been in the place of 
Robert Y. Hayne, in the debate on Foote's Resolution, it is 
doubtful whether Daniel Webster ever would have been called 
the " Great Defender of the Constitution." He was a finer 
rhetorician and orator than Webster, and a closer logician, — his 
style purer and his power of expression clearer. He had all 
of his momentum and more activity. Mr. Tyler's administration 
brought his abilities into view, and that itself is no little praise. 

Of Mr. Spencer's private life we know but little. He had 
been known and distinguished in the public councils. He had 
served with Mr. Tyler in Congress, and he knew his worth. 
He was a man of quick and active mind, penetrating and prac- 
tical. He knew well all the politics of New York, and was 
an adept in the ways of Wall Street. He was Secretary of 
War, but was best qual Ted to manage the finances. 



THE SIXTH DECADE. 201 

Upju the retii-einent of the Harrison Cabinet, Mr. Webster 
retained liis place us Secretary of State; and Mr. Forward, of 
Pennsylvania, for the Treasury, Mr. John McLean, of Ohio, for 
the War, Mr. Upsliur, of Virginia, for the Navy, -Mr. WiclvliCfe, of 
Kentucky, for the Postmaster-Generalship, and Mr. Legare, of 
South Carolina, for the Attorney-Generalship, were nominated 
and appointed in September, 1841. Mr. McLean declining to re- 
sign his seat on the Supreme Bench, Mr. Spencer was nominated 
and appointed in his place in the War Department in October, 
1841, and from the War he was changed to the Treasury 
Department in March, 1843 ; which place he resigned, owing to 
a difference with the administration on the policy of annexing 
Texas. He was succeeded in the Treasury by Mr. George M. 
Bibb, of Kentucky, in 1844. 

Mr. Wickliffe was a man of great Western reputation, distin- 
guished alike for his legal learning and his fine, manly judgment 
in all matters of politics and government. He remained in his 
place until the end of the administration. 

As for Mr. Legare, he had not his equal for the Attorney- 
Generalship in the United States. His life was one of study 
in the best schools at home and on the Continent of Europe. 
He was diplomat at Brussels long enough to enable him to dive 
deep into the civil law, and had at home been a reviewer of the 
highest order. He was grandly classic, and equal to the orig- 
inals of his studies. He was a Greek article in language, and 
a votary of the masters in literature. He had been rudiment- 
ally taught, and had followed his rudiments down to supreme 
practice. His Life has lately been published by his estimable 
sister, with all a sister's partiality, but truly, according to his 
real merit and worth. We regret only a passage in the review 
of his biography by the " Southern Review," vol. vii., number 
13, of the date of January, 1810. It says, "All who have 
studied our history must remember how unpopular was the 
administration of Mr. Tyler. It seemed to have a upas power 
of blighting every reputation which approached its shadow. 
Legare alone lost nothing by his association with it. On the con- 
trary, his fame steadily increased. The President, in the midst 



202 SEVEN DECADES OF THE UNION. 

of his distracting cares, learned to relj upon his Attorney- 
General for counsel and assistance. These were always frankly 
given, and thus a friendship was gradually established between 
them. Upon the withdrawal of Webster from the Cabinet, the 
duties of the State Department were confided to Legare ad 
interim. He showed his diplomatic skill by conducting to a 
successful conclusion the Ashburton Treaty, or at least that por- 
tion of it relating to the long-vexed and dangerous question of 
the right of search." 

Mr. Tyler's administration was unpopular for a time. The 
party which elected him was false to its professed principles, 
and tried to cover their own treachery by clamoring treason 
against him ; and the party which he had aided in crushing came 
not, of course, to his assistance, but chuckled that their oppo- 
nents were guilty of suicide, by ostracizing for the time their 
best men and by preventing the best of measures, the credit of 
which they might have secured. Every question that the ad- 
ministration disposed of was of the highest importance, and 
was managed with the utmost ability, yielding the richest frui- 
tion. The administration added to the reputation of every 
member of its counsels. Did not Webster and Upshur and 
Spencer and Wicklifife gain reputation as well as Legare ? 
What reputation was ever blighted by the shadow of an ad- 
ministration which wisely and well settled the Northeastern 
Boundary question, the Caroline question, the Bank and Tariff 
questions, the Southwestern Texas question? — which over- 
threw its revilers and revived Democracy, crushing both old 
Federalism and Locofocoism ? 

As contrasted with any administration since, M'ho would ndt 
have it installed again, with all its purity, independence, integ- 
rity, and intellect ? It had, it is true, no aspirant of its own 
for the succession, and had no candidate in the field for the 
Presidency, but it utterly demolished both of the corrupt par- 
ties which endeavored to sully its fame and to obstruct its 
honest efforts to maintain the best measures for the good of the 
country. The clamor raised against it was but for a day, and 
is a part of history only. 



THE SIXTH DECADE. 203 

Every reputation which it is said to have blighted now 
looms high above the cloud of dust from the dirty arena of 
Whigs divided against themselves, or of Locofocoism taking 
vengeance at the time. The parties and factions of the hour 
Mr. Tyler put behind him as our Saviour did Satan. There 
were others more distinguished than Mr. Legare, though as a 
lawyer he was entitled to be ranked with William Pinkney him- 
self He was worthy of Mr. Tyler's administration, and it was 
worthy of him; but it was not he who conducted the Ash- 
burton Treaty to a successful conclusion, for that work especially 
belonged to Mr. Tyler himself and to Mr. Webster, who did not 
retire from the Cabinet until it was essentially concluded; Mr. 
Legare took upon him ad interim the mere winding up of what 
was already concluded, and Mr. Upshur actually finished it. 
This is said not in order to detract from Legare, but to prevent 
an undue compliment to him at the expense of the reputation 
of others. His reputation needs no such compliment, and were 
he alive we are sure he would decline it. 

Mr. Webster, as we have just remarked, retired from the 
Cabinet only when the work of the Ashburton Treaty was 
concluded. That was a question which it was due to the 
Northeast, his section, that his master-mind should manage ; 
and when he saw clearly the end of it, he magnanimously retired 
to make way for a Southern statesman, when the time came to 

take up the next most important matter of foreign relations, 

Texas. 

This Cabinet proper of Mr. Tyler's administration was first 
disturbed by the retirement of Mr. Spencer ; then by the retire- 
m'ent of Mr. Webster, and afterwards by the death of the 
lamented Legare. He accompanied the President to Boston, to 
attend the Bunker Hill celebration, and disease fatally seized 
upon the sigmoid of his viscera. He died at the residence of 
Professor George Ticknor, of Harvard University, in Boston, 
June 20, 1813. His death was a national loss; but he had 
comrades in the Cabinet who were his equals, and such as he 
would have considered fully competent to take the Attorney- 
Generalship or the Department of State. Mr. Upshur took 



204 SEVEA"- DECADES OF THE UNION. 

the place of Mr. Webster, and Mr. Nelson the place of Mr. 
Legare. 

The second session of the Twenty-seventh Congress, the 
session of 1841-42, was marked by measures alike violent and 
disgraceful, and by the most acrimonious and unscrupulous fac- 
tious proceedings of the Opposition. The interval between 
this session and the called session of the summer of 1841, instead 
of softening the asperities excited by the vetoes, only heaped 
up fuel for ihe flames of the regular session. The message was 
calm, temperate, uncomplaining, unreproachful, and wisely ad- 
dressed itself to the highly important public business then 
calling for harmonious action, and requiring great care and skill 
in the conduct of the country's afi'airs at home and abroad. 
Some matters of state were even threatening to the national 
peace, yet Congress converted itself into a committee of the 
whole to consider nothing else but " how," in the language of 
the ogre of Whig politics, "to head John Tyler." 

The message brought to the consideration of Congress the 
very critical questions between the United States and Great 
Britain, growing out of the affair of the seizure of the steamer 
Caroline in 1837, the case of McLeod, the forcible seizure of 
Grogan, the protection of the territory of the United States 
against invasion at all hazards, the protection of the flag of the 
United States in the African seas, and the Northeastern boun- 
dary between the United States and Canada. The boundary 
and relations with Texas were also presented ; the Indian war 
in Florida; the finances; moderate counsels were recommended 
in revising the tarifl" of duties, and the expediency of laying 
duties solely in reference to the wants of the treasury for 
revenue was suggested ; the proceeds of the sale of public lands 
to be applied to diminishing the duties on imports ; and the 
currency and exchange and the fisc to be provided for by the 
system of an exchequer. 

The message fully redeemed the President's pledge to propose 
a plan for the regulation of the currency, exchange, and the fisc 
by the proposal of an exchequer. 

It was thoroughly elaborated by Mr. Gushing in his very able 



TRE SIXTH DECADE. 205 

report of that session, showing its merits as compared with a 
Bank of the United States, or with the State banli system, or 
with the " Sub-Treasury;" that it possessed the qualities of: 

1st. A safe and convenient agency for tlie custody and man- 
agement of the public funds. 

2d. A useful agency of exchanges and collections. 

3d. A national paper currency. 

4th. For the regulation of the bank paper currency of the 
States, by receiving it in payment of public dues, and present- 
ing it for redemption at short intervals of time. 

5th. The utilization of the public deposits, and of the specific 
funds of individuals, by rendering them the basis of a national 
paper circulation. 

6th. The bestowment, incidentally, of the business of the 
treasury, and within the letter of the Constitution, of benefits 
on the people of the United States. 

Tth. Not intrusting the control of the public funds, or of the 
currency, to an irresponsible private corporation. 

8th. Not loaning out the public money to private individuals. 

9th. Not making, and being incapable of making, any excess- 
ive issue, and incapable of suspending cash payments. 

10th Conducting the business of the treasury without the 
necessity of aid from the creatures of the legislation of the 
States. 

11th. Maintaining the legal money-standard by the use of 
either coin only, or of paper always equivalent to coin. 

12th. Being always within the control of Congress to repeal 
or amend it at pleasure. 

This plan of a fiscal system is the very foundation of the 
present prevailing system, without which the United States 
could not have been carried through its late civil war. Derided 
and denounced by the Congress of 1841-42, it was laid on the 
table, and was not allowed a consideration until its necessity and 
expediency were developed by tlie extreme exigencies of the 
Union. The reasons were obvious at the time, and too plain to 
be misunderstood. One branch of the Whigs were determined to 
have a national bank or nothing; the other branch had obtained 



2u6 SEVEN DECADES OF THE UNION. 

the veto, and desired to subject the President to the odium of 
deranging the currency and embarrassing the treasury; and the 
opponents of the Whigs, the spoils partisans of Mr. Van Buren, 
sought vengeance, and promoted the confusion of the party which 
had broken them down. Thus the exchequer was smothered 
for the time, and the President was left only what Mr. Clay 
called " a corporal's guard," — but six members in the House of 
Representatives, and not a supporter in the Senate, except Mr. 
Rives. 

We had the honor to be captain of that distinguished guard, 
and have reason now to glory in its eminent triumph ; it defeated 
the bank and crushed both factions of the Opposition. The 
very next election restored the Jackson Democracy to its pris- 
tine purity and power. Thus ended the savage struggle for a 
national bank. The President's firmness prevailed as to his 
policy and principles, and he outlived every assault of his 
enemies, and saw them overthrown by the power of truth. His 
reputation was not blighted any more than that of Mr. Legare ; 
both were canonized by their wisdom, moral courage, and in- 
tegrity. 

Other measures during this memorable session excited more 
vetoes of the President and more venom of party. An act of 
September, 1841, had been passed, and very improperly ap- 
proved by the President, to distribute the proceeds of the 
sales of the public lands among the States. It was carried by 
State clamor, over the Constitution ; the President ever after 
regretted his approval of it ; but it contained a limitation that it 
should cease in time of war, or whenever the exigencies of the 
treasury might demand duties for revenue exceeding twenty 
per cent, ad valorem. 

In the year 1842 it was found that government would have 
to exceed twenty per cent, of imposts, or resort again to the pro- 
ceeds of the sales of the public lands, and the President sent 
bis message to Congress dated March 25, 1842. He called 
attention to the finances, showed a deficiency of means from or- 
dinary sources, and urged retrenchment of expenditures, and in 
preference to laying duties higher than the compromise of the 



THE SIA'TH DECADE. 207 

Tariff question permitted, he recommended the most effectual 
method of supporting the credit of the States, as well as of the 
Federal government, by applying the proceeds of the sales of 
the public lands again to the public expenditures and debt. 
This was maintained by the clearest reasons of economy and 
good faith, enforced by causes of no ordinary character, de- 
ranging the currency and credit of the States. In the face of 
this message, Congress passed what was called the "Little 
Tariff Bill," which not only violated the Compromise act of 
1833, but the Distribution act of 1841. This brought down 
upon this bill another veto, in his message of June 29, 1842. 

Congress immediately prepared another bill, revising the 
whole tariff. The very necessity for the bill proved that the 
time had arrived to suspend the distribution of the proceeds of 
the sales of the public lands, as provided in the act of 1841. 
The effort was to distribute the proceeds of the sales of the 
public lands with one hand, whilst high protective duties, far 
above twenty per cent., were laid with the other, at a time when 
the treasury was seriously embarrassed. There could be no 
expectation that the President would countenance such profli- 
gacy of expenditure in order to give opportunity for sectional 
or selfish legislation, or such mala fides in executing the tariff 
compromise. But it was an object then to make the veto odious, 
and the Whig leaders drove the President to the extreme of 
another tariff veto. 

The bill was passed, and on the 9th of August he returned 
it with his veto. The message was a very able one, and sent 
in without consultation with his Cabinet. This message was 
made the pretext of most unauthorized, unprecedented, factious, 
and false proceedings on the part of Congress. The Constitu- 
tion provides the manner of proceeding upon the veto. This 
was meant not only to provide the mode of proceeding, but to 
prevent the imprudence, indecencies, and intemperance of heated 
action. All decorum was abandoned, the rule of the Consti- 
tution was unheeded, and the most intemperate action was 
taken. 

No consideration of the bill was had by the House of Repre- 



208 SEVEN DECADES OF THE UNION. 

sentatives, but a committee of thirteen was appointed, at the 
head of which was placed Mr. John Q. Adams, the ex-Presi- 
dent, advocate of " light-houses in the skies," the fanatic of 
abolition, the leading champion of the Massachusetts school of 
protective duties, and the man most vindictive against the South 
for its combined opposition to his minority election to the Pres- 
idency in 1824, for and iu consideration of his "bargain and 
corruption." The committee was not wholly servile to this 
illicit action. It made three reports, one by Mr. Adams, full of 
vituperation, one by Messrs. Charles J. Ingersoll and Mr. Rose- 
velt, and one by Mr. Thomas W. Gilmer, of Virginia. The 
reports speak for themselves. Mr. Adams's report was a com- 
plaint against the veto, — protesting against the action of Con- 
gress being " strangled by the five times repeated stricture of the 
Executive cord." It recommended a change of the Constitution, 
allowing a majority of Congress to pass a bill into a law over 
the veto. Mr. Gilmer's report was a very able one. He was, in 
early life, a rival and compeer of Mr. Rives, of the State Rights 
and Strict Construction school, an able and an honest man, 
firm, laborious, and prudent, whilst bold and generous in chiv- 
alric action. He was born and educated a gentleman, had been 
Governor of Yirginia, and whilst in that ofBce was highly dis- 
tinguished in his correspondence with Mr. Seward on a ques- 
tion of the extradition of a fugitive slave. He was able to stand 
alone on any committee when his conception of his duty called 
him to be bold and to act in defense of the right. 

The report of Messrs. Ingersoll and Rosevelt sustained him, 
and, though the majority of ten to three was great, the Presi- 
dent triumphed. The Revenue bill was passed without the 
distribution clause. But the Executive office and its defense 
as well as his own required of Mr. Tyler decisive remonstrance, 
and on the 20th of August, 1842, he sent in to the House of 
Representatives his solemn protest, marked by self-respecting 
defense and sound reproof. This action, these reports, and this 
protest have but to be read to place Mr. Tyler above the re- 
proach of all his revilers. 

At this session, too, in spite of all malignity, his administra- 



THE SIXTH DEC.iDE. 209 

tion concluded a treaty with England settling the questions of 
the Northeastern boundary and the right of search. It also 
concluded the Florida war, and passed an act authorizing armed 
occupation of that Territory. It settled the disturbances in 
Rhode Island, and maintained the established law, which ought 
to have been a precedent for establishing the position that the 
States were not to be questioned by the Federal authorities as 
to the supremacy of their established State governments. 

It held tlie true doctrine that the Federal Executive "could 
not look into real or supposed defects of the existing State 
government, in order to ascertain whether other plan of govern- 
ment proposed for adoption was better suited to the wants and 
more in accordance with the wishes of any portion of her citi- 
zens." 

And it would have been well if Congress had heeded this 
admonition when it undertook by legislative power to over- 
throw eleven State governments, and to revolutionize them by 
congressional restraint and reconstruction. 

The action of President Tyler in the case of the Dorr rebel- 
lion is a model of what Federal Executive action should be in 
a case where a State Constitution is disturbed ; and reconstruc- 
tion of late is its contrast in the extremest degree. The govern- 
ment of Rhode Island was established by royal prerogative, by 
a charter of a Stuart king, aristocratic in every feature, and a 
large majority of the citizens subject to its anti-republican feat- 
ures endeavored to hold an election and to establish such a re- 
publican form of government as the Constitution of the United 
States guarantees. But Mr. Tyler adhered to the maxim that 
he was bound " to respect the requisitions of that government 
which has been recognized as the existing government of the 
State through all time past until he was advised, in regular 
manner, that it has been altered and abolished, and another 
substituted in its pZace by legal and peaceable proceedings, 
adopted and ratified by the authorities and people of the State." 

How dififerent this from the treatment of Virginia by Con- 
gress and a Black Crook Convention 1 

Mr. Tyler's letter to Governor King, of Rhode Island, of the 

U 



210 SEVEN DECADES OF TEE UNION. 

date of April 11, 1842, is a fine specimen of the teaching of 
the old regime of Presidents in comparison with this age of 
congressional usurpation and of Executive proclamations. No- 
thing could show more fearfully the rapid tendency to the 
concentration of all power in the hands of Congress and of the 
Federal Executive. 

Yirginia had a Constitution, the first formed in 1776 by the 
fathers who had overthrown kings, which established the first 
written bill of the rights of man, and which lasted for fifty-four 
years an accepted plan of republican government; in 1829-30 
it was made, if possible, more republican and democratic, and 
twenty years after, in 1850-51, was still further liberalized by 
amendment. When the late civil war broke out, there was no 
question but that she had a republican form of government, 
and there was no human authority legally empowered to change 
it but her own people assembled in convention within her own 
defined territory. A majority of the people of Rhode Island were 
not permitted to change her charter of Charles the Second, for 
want of conventional power and form ; and yet, since the sur- 
render at Appomattox, a military despotism, exerted by the 
Federal Executive and a congressional usurpation in time of 
peace, has assailed and annihilated no less than three Constitu- 
tions of the people of Yirginia, that of 1776, that of 1829-30, 
and that of 1850-51, which had all been recognized and received 
by the nation as de jure and republican for the whole time of the 
existence of the Federal government. Rhode Island's kingly 
or ro3'al charter of limited suffrage could stand and must stand, 
but Virginia's conventional power of her people was torn away, 
persons not citizens were given elective franchise, and the 
franchises secured by her organic law were destroyed by the 
highest pretension of human power, more than kingly or impe- 
rial, a power of reconstruction ! It will be well for those who 
are and would remain free to note these high lights and shadows 
of human history. We have marked them by points firmer than 
those of pen or pencil, and so will the nation yet, unless given 
over to judicial blindness, ere they are established canons of 
despotism. 



THE SIXTH DECADE. 211 

There was an evident design on the part of the Clay faction 
of Whigs to lay a foundation for proceedings of impeachment. 
Every effort was made, by measures to extort vetoes, by speeches 
and reports in both Houses of Congress, and by the vilest vitu- 
peration of the press, to create such a prejudice against the 
President as would tolerate impeachment and try him by the 
animosities of both parties. 

This was impossible; his conduct was above impeachment, 
and his administration such a rock of integrity and intelligence 
that the waves of partisan proceedings broke against it into mere 
spray, and the leaders, too wily to risk reputation upon the 
issue, shrank back from their own designs, made to recoil by 
the firmness and virtue of a man who feared not and failed not 
to do his whole duty to the country. The administration was 
merely dashed by the spray. Providence made the factious 
Opposition convict itself of its own fatal folly. The Whigs of 
Mr. Clay's faction had an incorrigible zealot among them who 
brought impeachment into perfect travesty of itself. The coarse 
creature could not be restrained by his betters in the party, 
and he vowed that " he would head John Tyler or die." He 
gathered together all the garbage of abuse against the Presi- 
dent, and heaped it into resolutions of impeachment ; but, when 
stated, when summed up into its worst form, it was so foul, so 
false, so pointless, so offensive to every sense of good morals 
and good taste, so utterly bad and badly put, that it completely 
demolished the impudent and imprudent author himself, and 
disgusted, especially, the enemies of the President, who desired 
not to see him so "praised by faint damns" instead of being 
" damned by faint praise." 

In the midst of his conflicts with Congress, and oppressed 
already, as he was, by his public cares, the heaviest grief came 
upon him, — the loss of the wife of his youth, who had been the 
angel of his career for twenty-nine years, who had given him 
a large family of children, who had graced and crowned his 
home-life with every blandishment and bliss. She died at the 
Executive Mansion, on the 10th of September, 1842, beloved 
by all who knew her sweet, still, silent, unobtrusive worth, and 



212 SEVEN DECADES OF TEE UNION. 

mourned not alone by a husband who devotedly cherished and 
loved her, and by children who felt her affection like a balm at 
every breath, but by the friendless, the poor, and the distressed, 
whom she always turned to relieve, and never foi'got amid the 
splendors of a court and the gilded attractions of her position in 
high places. The bitterest political opponents of the President, 
the Intelligencer and the Glohe presses, praised her in obituaries 
which were not cold or formal, but warm with " the love and 
esteem of all." Happily, in Mrs. Semple, in Mrs. Robert Tyler, 
and in Mrs. Waller she left behind her sweet bouquets for the 
White House, and the President was not desolate in his bereave- 
ment. He was pi-epared for the departure of Mrs. Tyler, as she 
bad, previously to her last illness, been touched by that cold 
hand which sometimes gently warns of " the last call." Death 
in any form is terrible, but to the gentle, sweetened by grace, 
even death is often tender. She was a Christian, ready and 
assured, and did not suffer, physically, much pain. All the pain 
her honored husband, her sons and daughters, her friends and 
neighbors, and the beneficiaries of her bounties, felt, and felt 
deeply. How worthy she was, how loving and loved, and how 
I j honored in life and death, Mrs. Halloway has told in her " Ladies 
' of the White House." 

But family afflictions mitigated not the persecutions of the 
President by the party which elected him to power, violated 
its own pledges when accusing him of treachery and tergiver- 
sation, and the sessions of 1842-43 and 1843-44 but continued 
the vengeful spirit which scrupled not to assail and oppose 
every measure he proposed for the public good : it was enough 
for him to propose, for them to oppose and upbraid. The 
patience, equanimity, and smiling consciousness of rectitude 
which composed him all the time of his darkest trials, and kept 
him firm in the righteousness of his course, were more than any 
ordinary human virtue. He was calm, cautious, forbearing, 
forgiving, hopeful, and cheerful all the time, and no bitterness 
disturbed his placid contemplation of his exact situation and 
duty. His only weakness was that he could hardly say " no" 
to a friend, and was ever ready to try to appease a foe. He 



THE SIXTH DECADE. 213 

was unlimited iu his confidence to the one, and ever charitable 
and gracious to the other. He never spoke harshly of his 
revilers, and often provoked his friends by oiferiug' excuses and 
apologies for them ; yet his enemies not only drove him to 
vetoes, tried to force him to resign, endeavored to deprive him 
of a Cabinet, and rejected his nominations to places entitled 
to his Executive confidence in the Cabinet and foreign missions, 
but actually withheld from him the ordinary appropriations for 
the expenses of the Executive office. 

His private secretary has published to the world that " such 
was the bitterness of party feeling" — he ought to have said, 
" such was the bitterness of party leaders" — that " no appropria- 
tion was made by Congress either for furnishing the White 
House or for the office of private secretary, or for the inci- 
dental expenses of fuel, lights, doorkeepers," etc. Yet he kept 
the even tenor of his way, or mildly stood a steady target for 
every missile of rancor, meanness, and malice. They passed 
his great soul, his firm virtue, harmless to him, but destructive, 
deadly destructive, in reaction against the fiendish foes who had 
no scruples and no shame. 

Mr. Tyler's first Cabinet was nominated and confirmed oa 
the 13th of September, 1841. 

In March, 1843, Mr. Forward, Secretary of the Treasury, re- 
signed, and Mr. Spencer was transferred from the War Depart- 
ment to that of the Treasury, Mr. Cushing, of Massachusetts, 
having been first nominated and rejected by the Senate. Mr. 
Webster, having accomplished his great work of the North- 
eastern boundary, the settlement of the Caroline and McLeod 
affairs, and the right of search with Great Britain, resigned 
the office of Secretary of State in May, 1843. Mr. Legare was 
appointed to act ad interim in his place, and died June 20, 
1843. In July, 1843, the Cabinet was reorganized, three vacan- 
cies existing in it at the time, those of State, War, and the At- 
torney-Generalship. Abel P. Upshur was then made Secretary 
of State; John C. Spencer was continued Secretary of the Treas- 
ury; James M. Porter, of Pennsylvania, was made Secretary 
of War; David Henshaw, of Massachusetts, was made Secre- 



2U SEVEN DECADES OF THE UNION. 

tary of the Navj ; John Nelson, of Maryland, Attorney-Gen- 
eral, and Charles Wicklifife continued Postmaster-General. At 
the next session of the Senate, the nominations of Messrs. 
Porter and Henshaw were rejected, and William Wilkins, of 
Pennsylvania, was made Secretary of War, and Thomas W. 
Gilmer, of Virginia, Secretary of the Navy, both of whom were 
confirmed February 15, 1814. Thus the Cabinet stood: Up- 
shur, of State ; Spencer, of the Treasury ; Wilkins, of War ; 
Gilmer, of the Navy ; Nelson, Attorney-General ; Wickliffe, 
Postmaster-General, — when the awful catastrophe of the " de- 
structive Peacemaker," on board the steam frigate Princeton, 
occurred on the Potomac River, the 28th of February, 1844. 
And here we must indulge in an episode. 



y 



CHAPTER XL 

THE SIXTH DECADE, FROM 1840 TO 1S50. 

Vacancy in the Supreme Court-The Case of Vidal et al. vs. Girard's Executors- 
Sergeant, Binney, Webster, Jones— Reason why Sergeant and Binney de- 
clined—How Mr. Calhoun was called to the Department of State— A Per- 
sonal Scene with Mr. Tyler after the Catastrophe of the Princeton-The 
New Cabinet. 

On the 8th of February, 1844, having been nominated and 
confirmed as Minister Plenipotentiary to the empire of Brazil, 
we resigned our seat in the House of Representatives of the 
Congress of the United States. Previous to that time there 
was\ vacancy in the Supreme Court caused by the death of 
that eminent jurist and patriot, Judge Henry Baldwin. Mr. 
Tyler requested the place to be tendered in his name to Mr. 
John Sergeant, of Philadelphia. There was a delicacy and 
embarrassment in obeying the request, and so the President 

was informed. 

We had some apprehension that the tender would be repulsed, 
coming from Mr. Tyler, whose course Mr. Sergeant had con- 
demned, through one who had vindicated that course and the 
good faith of the President. Mr. Sergeant was stern and proud 
in his integrity, and extremely jealous on the point of honor. 
Mr. Tyler said Mr. Sergeant was a man of the highest probity 
and the most distinguished ability; that his condemnation of 
his course respecting the fiscal corporation arose entirely from 
misapprehension and misunderstanding, and he honored him 
the more for acting on an honest conviction, .though that con- 
viction was founded on mistake, and was unjust to himself; he 
knew he was honest and able far above most men, and the 
countrv and Supreme Court should not be deprived of his name 

(215) 



216 SEVEN DECADES OF THE UNION. 

and services for any personal misjudgment of himself or his 
course. He insisted on tendering hira the place. At the time 
the tender was made, the great case of Vidal et al. vs. Girard's 
executors was before the Supreme Court. 

Originally Mr. Sergeant was the counsel of the city of Phila- 
delphia in that case, and he had at the previous term of the court 
ably argued, and, in fact, won the case, — mainly on the ground of 
the decisions of the Pennsylvania courts on the doctrine of chari- 
table uses. But anxiety was felt concerning the issue by the city, 
and the decision was deferred, at the instance of Mr. Sergeant 
in part, in order that Mr. Binney might add his great weight 
of argument and authority to his own. Thus time was gained 
for the deliberate preparation of great minds for the final 
struggle on the important doctrine involved in the law. Mr. 
Binney went to England and conferred with Lord Campbell, in 
order that he might study and scan the rolls on the doctrine of 
charitable uses. He came back thoroughly armed, bringing 
new armor from the unpublished rolls on that doctrine. His 
aim was to subvert the doctrines laid down by Judge Marshall 
and Judge Tucker in the cases which had gone up previously 
from Virginia. Daniel Webster and Walter Jones were arrayed 
against Sergeant and Binney. It was the heaviest of forensic 
artillery duels. Sergeant had made his arguments most over- 
whelming on the grounds of Pennsylvania decisions, regardless 
of the doctrines maintained in cases coming from Virginia. 
Binney was now prepared to show not only that the doctrines 
of charitable uses, insisted on by the city of Philadelphia, were 
those of the State from Avhich the case came, but that they 
were the true doctrines of the common law and of the State of 
Virginia, and ought to prevail in every State and everywhere. 
This was his burden to show, and his work was not supererog- 
atory or vain, — useless to win the G:rard case, but invaluable 
in teaching the sound law of charitable uses. The case was 
doubly won, first by Sergeant on the American law, and then 
by Binney on the English law. The forensic display in the case 
was grand on both sides. 

Mr. Jones's three points in the case were : 



THE SIXTH DECADE. 217 

1. The bequest of the College fuud was void by reason of the 
uucei'tainty of the cestui que trust. 

2. The corporation of Philadelphia was not authorized by it8 
charter to administer the trusts of the legacy, and no other 
trustee could be substituted without defeating the intentions of 
the testator. 

3. Even if otherwise capable of taking effect, the trust would 
be void, because the plan of education proposed was anti-Chris- 
tian, and therefore repugnant to the law of Pennsylvania. (See 
Tidal and others vs. Girard Ex'rs, 2d Howard, 143, January 
Term, 1844.) 

Mr. Jones said, " A part of this devise would make it a curse 
to any civilized land. It is a cruel experiment upon poor 
orphan boys to shut them up and make them the victims of a 
philosophical speculation," etc. 

In his quiet, insinuating, lispiug tones, he said, " Mr. Girard 
had devised mere nourishment for the mind, without care of 
moral instruction, and the Trustees had expended an immense 
sum in erecting a temple of marble to the 'unknown God.' 
The testator had not meant to make the College religiously free, 
but to make it free of all religion. The orphans needed a fish, 
and they were given a serpent ; bread, and they had gotten a 
stone 1" 

All this was taken to be personal to Mr. Sergeant, who was 
one of the chief counselors of the city of Philadelphia in admin- 
istering the charity ; and the point of Mr. Jones was a poniard 
to him, — the more so, because he had always admired and 
respected Mr. Jones as one of the first forensic men of his day. 
Jones did not seem to be conscious of where or whom his point 
touched, but whilst he was speaking in front of the judge's 
seat, Mr. Sergeant was boiling with indignation and wrath in 
the court lobby, and the moment Mr. Jones was done he took 
him to the lobby and called him to severe account. Jones 
was astonished, disclaimed all personality, and calmly remon- 
strated against Mr. Sergeant's wrath ; but the latter was not 
appeased, and it was feared that some one would have to 
interpose to prevent serious collision between these two, giants 



218 SEVEN DECADES OF THE UNION. 

of intellect and champions of argument, but both small in 
stature. They were finally reconciled, however, though the one 
was sore under the figure of speech, and the other was sore from 
the scolding he had got for it. It was rich to see such a scene 
between two such men. 

Again, there was another scene. When Mr. Binney rose to 
deliver his argument, Mr. Webster, having the conclusion, was 
obliged, by rule, to furnish him with all his points and all his 
authorities. This he did with great urbanity, just as Mr. Bin- 
ney was about to open his address to the court. Jones had 
been heard. Sergeant had closed, and Mr. Binney had taken a 
moment to retire to the anteroom of the court, to adjust his 
personal attire and presence. He was particular about that, 
and came into the court refreshed by water aud smooth from 
the comb and brush. He was always very serene in his aspect, 
and, without a forward look, expressed a composed self-reliance. 
He had just begun, when Mr. Webster rose and apologized for 
not having obeyed the rule before, and then cited his points and 
references. Mr. Binney paused to hear him, with his arms 
folded, and when he was done smiled a sweet smile of indiffer- 
ence, and gently said, with a slight wave of his hand, that he 
" fully excused his learned brother for his delay of citation, for 
he would have no occasion to touch a single point, or any- 
thing cited by him," and then unfolded that masterly treatise 
on charitable uses, which his great argument deserves to be 
called, — a standard of authority now on the doctrines then in 
debate. ' 

Mr. Webster was taken aback, and staggered. 

Mr. Binney was no better lawyer than Mr. Sergeant, but was 
a far better speaker, and his style was as rich and pure as that 
of any other orator or writer of English in his day. His eulogy 
on his professional brother and rival and friend, Mr. Sergeant, is 
a gem of encomiastic composition. His forte was lucid order, 
perfectly expressed by the clearest logic and the richest but most 
severely chaste figure. 

Mr. Sergeant's forte was solid terseness, direct to the truth, 
but didactically dry. Neither was superior to Mr. Jones as a 



THE SIXTU DECADE. 219 

forensic debater, aud all three were lawyers of the highest de- 
gree, either superior to Webster in the court, but uot iu the 
Senate. 

The evening after Mr. Binney concluded his great argument, 
in January, 1844, Mr. Sergeant was visited by us, at his hotel, 
to deliver the message of Mr. Tyler. Mr. Binney was in the 
next room. Mr. Sergeant received the compliment with gra- 
ciousness aud evident pleasure ; but he hesitated not to decline 
the tender of a place on the Supreme Bench. Before he assigned 
his reason he enjoined secrecy during his life, and especially 
it was not to be disclosed to Mr. Binney. It was that he was 
past sixty years of age, and that he ought not to accept ; but 
he regarded Mr. Binney as being much more robust than him- 
self, considered that Mr. Binney might accept, and did not wish 
him to know that he had declined because he considered him- 
self too old, and requested that the President would make the 
tender of the place to him. It was tendered to Mr. Binney at 
once, and, behold, he declined it for the same reason, but begged 
that Mr. Sergeant should not be informed of his reason, and 
that the place might be tendered to him. 

Neither, we believe, ever knew the reason of the other for 
declining. 

Mr. Binney said he had once, in the vigor of his manhood, 
aspired to judicial position, — to a seat on the Supreme Bench 
of Pennsylvania; but Mr. Justice Gibson of that State had 
been preferred to him, and that cured his ambition, and he had 
never since aspired to the bench. 

No better instance than this could \^e given of Mr. Tyler's 
magnanimity. He knew that neither of these gentlemen ap- 
proved of his course as President, and that both condemned 
him personally on the Bank question ; but he knew that they 
were good and great men, and he forgot his own grievances, 
personally, for the sake of the public good. He was remark- 
able for his faculty of selecting the right men for the right 
places, and hardly ever allowed a personal predilection to 
prevail. 

Mr. Binney was among the warmest admirers of Judge 



220 SEVEN DECADES OF THE UNION. 

Marshall. He was his critic of the " Life of Washington." 
The evening he declined a place on the Supreme Bench he 
naturally conversed on the Girard case and the doctrines it 
involved. He said that Judge Marshall's decisions on the 
cases from Virginia were the only authorities he had reason to 
dread in the case, but that charitable uses were exactly the 
sort of subject on which Judge Marshall could err ; that they 
were purely arbitrary and artificial doctrines, and required great 
learning and research, which Judge Marshall had not bestowed, 
and, great as he was, incalculable as was the good he had 
done on the bench, he doubted very much whether that good 
was not largely counterbalanced by his great error, for the 
want of learning, on the subject of charitable uses. 

To return to the catastrophe of the Princeton. We were a 
few evenings after sitting again with Mr. Sergeant in his room 
at Gadsby's Hotel, conversing at ease, when the notable waiter 
on his room, John Sable, black, with moonshine eyes, always 
smiling and showing his teeth in white contrast with his ebony, 
entered, smiling as ever, and bowing complacently to Mr. Ser- 
geant and his guests. Mr. Sergeant saluted him, saying, 
" Well, John, what is the news to-day ?" John smiled more 
wiuningly still, and bowed lower, replying, " Well, sir, none but 
very sad, just come this moment, — the Peacemaker is busted, 
and it is said Mr. Upshur and others are killed and wounded, — 
the hack is just from the wharf with the news." This was the 
first announcement to us of the sad event, and was the more 
shocking from its contrast with John's smiling and bowing. 
We immediately sprang down the stairway to the street front 
door. There was a large crowd already gathered, each inquir- 
ing of the hacks just driven up, "Who was killed, — who 
injured ?" In the crowd, at the right, we saw the figure of 
young Abel Upshur, the brother of Mrs. Upshur (she was a 
Miss Upshur), and as soon as one of the hack-drivers answered 
that Mr. Upshur, Mr. Gilmer, and others were killed, he burst 
from the crowd and ran for Mrs. Upshur's residence. To pre- 
vent the shock of his sudden announcement, we pursued him 
in a hack, but he outran the hack, and had already when we 



THE SIXTH DECADK. 221 

arrived stunned Mrs. Upshur, her daughter, and sister. "We 
never saw such dumb and dismal grief. Mrs. Upshur sat tear- 
less, with eyes staring and fixed on vacancy, alternately raising 
her hands and letting them fall on her lap, repeating incessantly, 
" It can't be so ! it can't be so !" And the daughter, afterwards 
Mrs. Ringgold, one of the softest, sweetest images of her father, 
sank in the most piteous moaning for her father, who had cher- 
ished her with the fondest devotion and tenderness. We gave 
to them, and after them to Mrs. Gilmer, all the consolation in our 
power, took their requests to proceed the next morning to the 
steamer, there to see the bodies, and retired late at night to reflect 
on what the administration was to do in filling the vacancies in 
the Cabinet. We came at once to our conclusions. Mr. Web- 
ster remained in the Cabinet until the Northeastern question 
was settled, and as long as Upshur or Legar^ was alive, the 
Southwestern question was in safe Southern hands ; but now 
that they were both taken away, there was one man left who was 
necessary above all others to the South in settling and obtaining 
the annexation of Texas. We need hardly say that man was 
John C. Calhoun, of South Carolina. But we knew that, for 
some reason of which we were never informed, the President was 
opposed to calling him to his Cabinet. It is vain to conjecture 
the reason, and we are utterly unable to account for the fact, but 
the fact was known, and that caused us to be guilty of assuming 
an authority and taking a liberty with the President which few 
men would have excused and few would have taken. We 
thought of Mr. McDuffie, then in the Senate, and determined 
to act through him. The President, in 1843, at the instance of 
the Hon. Baillie Peyton, had sent our name to the Senate for 
the mission to Prance, and the nomination was rejected at a 
moment when it was the rule of party not to allow him to have 
any of his own friends in appointments when the Opposition 
could prevent. Thus, Mr. Cushing, for the Treasury, Mr. Porter, 
of Pennsylvania, for the War, and Mr. Henshaw, of Massachu- 
setts, for the Navy, were all rejected ; and when our name for 
France was before the Senate, and the doctrine was openly 
avowed that the President should not be allowed to have his 



222 SEVEX DECADES OF THE UNION. 

own friends in place, Mr. McDuffie bad met the dogma as it 
deserved, and denounced it with great cogency and spirit. Our 
nomination hardly deserved the defense he made, but its natural 
effect was to draw us to him in personal gratitude for the vindi- 
cation which it caused in 1843-44 by the confirmation of our 
mission to Brazil. "We determined, through him, to act on Mr, 
Calhoun, whilst we took unprecedented license with Mr. Tyler. 
Before breakfast, by sunrise the next morning, the 29th of 
February, 1844, we visited Mr. McDuffie's parlor. He was not 
dressed, but came down in his slippers and robe-de-chambre. 
We excused our calling so early by the exigency arising from 
the catastrophe on board the Princeton, and immediately in- 
quired whether Mr. Calhoun, in his opinion, could be prevailed 
on to accept the State Department with a view to the vital 
question of annexation. He admitted the magnitude of the 
interest involved, and how desirable it was to have it negotiated 
by Mr. Calhoun, but feared that he would not accept. We 
then urged him to write to Mr. Calhoun immediately, saying 
that his name would, in all probability, be sent to the Senate 
at once, and begging him not to decline the office if his nomi- 
nation should be made and confirmed. Mr. McDuffie's delicacy 
towards us doubtless prevented him from inquiring whether we 
spoke by Mr. Tyler's authority or not, and we made no state- 
ment to him pro or con. on that point, but presume he must 
have supposed that we were authorized to make the request, 
for he promised to write to Mr. Calhoun at once. 

On parting from him we went directly to the presidential 
mansion to breakfast. At the gate of the White House grounds 
Ave met Judge John B. Christian, of Virginia, the brother-in- 
law of Mr. Tjier, and, when we reached the house, found Mr. 
Tyler and Dr. Miller, another brother-in-law of his, in the 
breakfast-room. Mr. Tyler was standing with his right elbow 
resting on the mantel of the fireplace, and held a morning paper 
in his left hand, containing an account of the awful catastrophe 
of the day before. As soon as he saw us he accosted us wiih 
tremulous emotion, saying how humbled he was by his provi- 
dential escape whilst such invaluable friends had fallen from 



THE SIXTH DECADE. 223 

around him, and he turned his face to the wall in a flood of 
tears. We came to his relief at once by saying that it was 
no time for mourning or wasting himself in grief, — that the 
moment called for prompt action and attention to duty, and 
that his work was pressing and heavy. It was an auspicious 
time, at least, to nominate for the vacancies in his Cabinet, when 
the dignity and solemnity of public grief for so great a calamity 
would shame and hush all factious opposition, and human sym- 
pathy alone at such a moment would confirm the nominations 
he would then make to the Senate. There were too many 
important affairs to be disposed of in this last year of his term 
of office to admit of delay. He must subdue his grief and find 
relief, the best relief, in turning to his tasks. He asked at 
once, " What is to be done ?" The answer was ready : " Your 
most important work is the annexation of Texas, and the man 
for that work is Mr. Calhoun. Send for him at once." 

His air changed at once, and he quickly and firmly said, 
" No : Texas is important, but Mr. Calhoun is not the man of 
my choice." 

Aided by Judge Christian and Dr. Miller, we reasoned with 
him, though in vain, until the bell rang for breakfast. At the 
table the conversation turned on the calamity of the previous 
day ; and the President gave a minute description of the 
manner in which by the most trivial circumstance he had been 
detained in the cabin at the table with the ladies, whilst Stock- 
ton, Upshur, Gilmer, Kennon, Maxcy, Gardner, and Benton all 
went up on deck to witness the trial of the Peacemaker! 
During the whole breakfast we were exceedingly uneasy, think- 
ing how we should prevail upon him to nominate Mr. Calhoun 
and justify us to Mr. McDuffie. Of this we were assured, that 
if Mr. McDuffie's letter reached Mr. Calhoun before a nomina- 
tion was made, he, Mr. Calhoun, would decline the nomination, 
and thus waive our committal to Mr. McDuffie ; but if Mr. 
Tyler should nominate before Mr. Calhoun replied, declining, 
then we would be in an awkward position, as having made an 
implied committal to his nomination. But " the policy of 
rashness" saved us, as it had often done before and has often 



224 SEVEN DECADES OF THE UNION. 

done since, and sent in Mr. Calhoun's nomination. As soon 
as breakfast was over, we rose, hat in hand, to depart, went 
with some impressiveness of manner directly up to Mr. Tyler, 
and said, " Sir, in saying good-morning' to you now, I may be 
taking a lasting farewell. I have unselfishly tried to be your 
friend and to aid your administration of public affairs, and have, 
doubtless, your kind feelings and confidence ; but I fear I have 
done that which will forfeit your confidence and cause us to be 
friends no longer. You say that you will not nominate Mr. 
Calhoun as your Secretary of State. If so, then I have done 
both you and him a great wrong, and must go immediately to 
Mr. McDuflSe to apologize for causing him to commit himself, 
and you too, by an unauthorized act of mine." 

" What do you mean ?" exclaimed the President, evidently 
disturbed. 

" I mean that this morning, before coming here, uninvited, 
to breakfast, I went to Mr. McDuffie and prevailed on him 
to write to Mr. Calhoun and ask him to accept the place of 
Secretary of State at your hands." 

" Did you say you went at my instance to make that request ?" 

" No, I did hot in words, but my act, as your known friend, 
implied as much, and Mr. McDuffie was too much of a gentle- 
man to ask me whether I had authority express from you. I 
went to him without your authority, for the very reason that I 
knew I could not obtain it ; and I did not tell Mr. McDuffie that 
I had not your authority, for I knew he would not in that case 
have written to Mr. Calhoun as I had requested. And now, 
if you do not sanction what I have done, you will place me 
where you would be loath to place a foe, much less a friend. I 
can hardly be your friend any longer unless you sanction my 
unauthorized act for your own sake, not my own." 

He looked at us in utter surprise for some minutes, and then, 
lifting both hands, said, " Well, you are the most extraordinary 
man I ever saw ! — the most willful and wayward, the most 
incorrigible ! and therefore there is no help for it. No one 
else would have done it in this way but you, and you are the 
only man who could have done it with me. Take the office 



THE SIXTH DECADE. 225 

and tender it to Mr. Calhoun ; I doubtless am wrong in re- 
fusing the services of such a man. You may write to him 
yourself at once." 

We answered that we would do no such thing, for if Mr. 
Calhoun was given time to do so he would decline ; and we 
therefore asked that his name should be sent to the Senate at 
once, when it would be confirmed, and then he could not de- 
cline. This was done ; Mr. Calhoun's nomination was sent in 
and confirmed even before Mr. McDufBe's letter reached him. 
Thus was that great and good man secured to the state, and 
we had the honor and satisfaction of serving under his wise 
iastructions in the first year of our mission. lie was the 
ablest executive man of his day ; his forte was in the Cabi- 
net, not in the Senate. He was pure and simple in heart as a 
child, and had no equal in mental abstraction. Mr. Tyler never 
had reason to repent our wayward procurement of Mr. Cal- 
houn's nomination ; and neither Mr. Calhoun nor Mr. McDuffie 
ever knew, so far as we are informed, how it was procured. 
The honor to Mr. Calhoun was that of having his name sent 
to the Senate without his knowledge or consent, and of having 
it confirmed without being informed even that it had been sent 
in. No Senate would have dared to reject his nomination. 

From the White House that morning we went to the steamer 
Princeton, then lying down the river a little below Alexandria. 
Our first care was to wait upon Commodore Stockton. He was 
lying in his state-room, scorched and burnt almost blind; but 
he was a hero, and could bear physical suffering without a 
groan, — a generous and noble hero, who felt most the mental 
agony of having been, though innocently, the instrument of the 
visitation of Providence. We offered him the solace coming 
from two of the afflicted families that amidst their own grief 
they sympathized with him. They and all knew how devotedly 
he had labored to give to the navy a model ship, the Princeton, 
armed with the " Peacemaker,'''' and how far removed from all 
blame or reproach his motives were in having on board such an 
assemblage of dignitaries to witness the trial of his gun, thought 
to be an assured success, having been thoroughly tested. His 

15 



226 SEVEN DECADES OF THE UNION. 

eyes were bandaged ; but we could perceive the explosion of his 
feelings, and his bosom heaved as if it, too, would burst. He 
reached out his hand, which we grasped in friendship for life ; 
and we have now hanging before us a picture of the Princeton, 
painted for him in New York at considerable cost, and which 
Avas very fine until captured and injured in the late civil war. 

The " Peacemaker" was placed on the bow of the vessel. 
The commodore had a splendid collation in the cabin, and, be- 
fore the gun was fired, had invited all his guests below to par- 
take of his generous hospitality. The ladies and the President 
were first shown to the table, and the former, being afraid of 
the gun, kept below and detained the President with them. 
Those who went up to witness the firing had just partaken of 
the wine, and parted from the ladies and the President with 
toasts to the " Commodore and his Peacemaker." The awful 
scene, as it occurred on deck, was fully described by officers 
and men of the ship. It seems that there had been a foreboding 
with some, openly expressed before the accident, that it or 
something like it would happen. One of the seamen, an "old 
salt," told us that Secretary Upshur distrusted the gun, and, 
just before the moment of firing, desired him to place him at a 
point of safety. The gun was, as we have said, on the bow; 
the seaman placed the Secretary a little aport, with the fore- 
mast directly between him and the breech of the gun. Alas! 
how singular that, though the " salt's" experience put the 
Secretary at the very point where injury was least to have been 
expected, he was struck by two fragments of the torn cast-iron, 
— by one immediately over the right brow, cutting to the bone 
parallel with the brow its whole length, so that it fell like a flap 
over the eye, and by the other on the watch-fob of his panta- 
loons, breaking his watch-crystal and instantly stopping the 
hands of the watch. We carefully bore the watch, as it was 
taken from his person, home to his family, and requested 
them to mark the time it told, as his pulse had ceased with 
the tick of the watch when its hands were stopped. His noble 
head — a finer structure than that of Webster — was crushed by 
the blow on the brow, and the concussion on his side must have 



THE SIXTU DECADE. 227 

taken away bis breath instantly. Stockton, who never knew 
fear, and who was more than sanguine of the success of his 
experiment, stood on the port side of the gun, immediately 
beside or opposite the touch-hole, with Mr. Gilmer, Secretary of 
the Navy, to his right. Commodore Kennon, Mr. Gardner, and 
Mr. Maxcy were standing between Mr. Upshur and the port 
gunwale, Kennon a little aft. On the starboard side Mr. Benton 
had his hand resting on the bow carronade, and a colored man- 
servant was leaning his breast on the same carronade. The 
gun was fired, and tlie havoc was shocking. Stockton was 
struck down blind ; Gilmer's body, broken and crushed in every 
part, was driven to the port gunwale on the deck, looking like 
a wad of blue cloth, he having on a full circle Spanish cloak; 
two fragments struck the deck between the foremast and the 
gunwale, and, ricocheting, made an angle around the foremast 
and struck Upshur as we have described ; Gardner and Maxcy 
were struck directly by the powder-blast and killed outright; 
Kennon instantly fell, but rose to his elbow, and breathed a 
few moments in the arms of a sailor ; and the breech-pin of the 
gun, blown obliquely starboard, struck the bow carronade, and 
the concussion knocked Mr. Benton senseless and killed the ser- 
vant. The story was that General Jackson always doubted 
whether Benton had his right mind afterwards. 

By the time we reached the ship, the gallant and gentlemanly 
officers had performed their sad offices well; the dead bodies 
were bound up with that neatness which characterizes sailors' 
work, and decently laid out in their clothes, and were ready to 
be placed in charge of friends. We took the bodies of Upshur 
and Gilmer in our charge, and saw to them until the last sad 
rites were performed. 

This catastrophe imposed upon Mr. Tyler the necessity of 
forming his Cabinet anew. He appointed John C. Calhoun, of 
South Carolina, Secretary of State ; John C. Spencer, of New 
York, Secretary of the Treasury ; William Wilkins, of Pennsyl- 
vania, Secretary of War ; John Y. Mason, of Virginia, Secre- 
tary of the Navy ; John Nelson, of Maryland, Attorney-Gen- 
eral ; and Robert Wickliffe, of Kentucky, Postmaster-General. 



CHAPTER XII. 

' THE SIXTH DECADE, FROM 1840 TO 1850. 

Departure for Brazil — The Calhoun Cabinet — The Last Year of the Administra- 
tion, and the Annexation of Texas — Mr. Spencer retires — Election of 1844 — 
The Triumph of Mr. Tyler's Policy — Comparison with Jefferson's Adminis- 
tration — Mr. Tyler's Second Marriage — A Scene on a James River Steamer 
— Mr. William L. Marcy ; Anecdotes of him and Robert G. Scott, Esq., of 
Richmond, Va. — The Sherwood Estate of Mr. Tyler — His Appointment and 
Services as Overseer of Roads in Charles City County — His Retirement and 
Private Life — Professor Holmes's Slur upon him in the University Series — 
What he did in preparing for the Acquisition of California — The Effect of 
the Gold-Mines — The Revival of the Missouri Compromise Controversy — The 
South dwarfed in the Union. 

We departed for Brazil in March, 1844, leaving the President 
with his new Cabinet of able ministers ; and it is enough to say 
•of them that they were the equals of the first Cabinet appointed 
by Mr. Tyler himself. 

Calhoun was the compeer of Webster ; Spencer himself wns 
in better position ; Wilkins was the equal of Forward ; Mason 
and Nelson were worthy successors of Upshur and Legar6 ; 
and Wicklifife remained the same efficient master of his place. 

The last year of Mr. Tyler's administration was chiefly em- 
ployed in negotiations for the annexation of Texas. The Maine 
boundary had been settled by Mr. Webster, and this last task 
was appropriately a work for Mr. Calhoun. Spain had regained 
her possession of Texas in 1692. A part of it, as far west as the 
Colorado, had been claimed by the United States as a part of 
Louisiana, in 1818, but by the treaty which ceded Florida to the 
United States, in 1819, the boundary of the United States had 
been fixed at the river Sabine. By the battles of Gonzalez, the 
Alamo, Goliad, and San Jacinto, Texas gained her independence, 
(228^ 



THE SIXTH DECADE. 229 

and in 1837 she sought admission into the Union. Her tender 
of annexation was rejected by Mr. Van Buren, though his Sec- 
retary of State, Mr. Forsyth, was a Georgian. 

Northern jealousy of any more acquisition of territory in the 
South prevented the Locofoco dynasty from venturing to do 
what the people of the United States, in fact, demanded. Before 
he was killed, Mr. Upshur had nearly, if not quite, concluded 
negotiations with Yan Zandt and Henderson, the Texas Com- 
missioners, under the auspices of Mr. Tyler; and when Mr. Cal- 
houn came in, he found Upshur's work entirely worthy of his 
approval and co-operation, and it took only from February 28 
to April 12, 1844, for him to finish what Upshur had left to be 
concluded. 

On the 12th of April, 1844, Mr. Tyler negotiated the treaty 
of annexation, and it was rejected by the Senate on the 8th 
of June following. In less than two months this great acquisi 
tion was refused by a partisan Senate, 16 ayes to 35 nays, 
such was the unreasoning malice of a Federal Whig majority 
with Northern proclivities against a measure so vital to the 
nation, because it was that of a man whom they were trying to 
balk in every effort to serve his country. But the wisdom of 
the President was not to be defeated by so stark mad an oppo- 
sition. The palm of winning the prize, worth the work of a 
presidential term, was not to be lost to a watchful President, 
guarded remarkably by Divine Providence. Notwithstanding 
Mr. Clay and Mr. Yan Buren, on the same day in April, 1844, 
the one in the National Intelligencer, and the other in the 
Globe, both published letters against the annexation of Texas, 
as "compromising," in the language of Mr. Clay, "the national 
charactei', and dangerous to the integrity of the Union ;" yet 
the administration did not expire before, on the 1st of March, 
1845, a joint resolution was adopted annexing Texas, and giving 
to an honest President the only triumph he sought, — that of 
wisdom and virtue. Mr. John C. Spencer, not concurring in the 
treaty for annexation, had, in May, 1844, resigned his place in 
the Treasury, and George M. Bibb, of Kentucky, was nominated 
and confirmed in his place. 



230 SEVEN DECADES OF THE UNION. 

The question of the annexation of Texas controlled the presi- 
dential election. 

In May, 1844, the party national conventions were held. 
The Whigs nominated Clay and Frelinghuysen, opposed to an- 
nexation ; and the Democrats nominated Polk and Dallas, in 
favor of annexation; the election took place in the fall of that 
year, and tlie people sustained the administration of Mr. Tyler 
by an overwhelming majority for the annexation ticket. Thus 
the nation itself at last carried the question for Mr. Tyler, over- 
throwing Mr. Clay " with a Senate at his heels." Such a victory 
was never obtained by a President without a party. This 
ended his administration and crushed all his enemies, — the Fed- 
eral Whigs and the Locofoco Democrats, — the Clays and Yan 
Burens of his opponents and revilers. Victory after victory, 
success after success, he won, and boon after boon, with count- 
less blessings, he bestowed on his country, with only a corpo- 
ral's guard at his command, against hosts of numbers and hells 
of hate. This did not look like a upas-tree which blasted all in 
its shade ! Let us compare his administration with that of the 
Father of Democracy. 

On the 6th of February, 1809, when Mr. Jefferson was ap- 
proaching the close of his administration of public affairs, and 
was about to end his public career, the Virginia legislature 
passed resolutions of eulogy on his course, which showed that 
he was a favorite son of his mother State ; and the best that 
could be said in his approval, what was said in love and affec- 
tion for him, could have been said as truly in justice to, if not 
in favor of, Mr. Tyler. 

First. Mr. Jefferson's administration was praised for its 
pure Republicanism. It was Republican when there was a 
Republican party, with power to enforce Republican policy. Mr. 
Tyler's was Republican when there were none so poor as to do 
Republicanism reverence. It was purely Republican, for it was 
so from choice and not from any prospects or hope of reward. 
It was pure as martyrdom is always pure, in contrast with 
petted power. 

Secondly. Mr. Jefferson's administration was praised for 



THE SIXTH DECADE. 231 

putting aside and behind it all "pomp and state." If Mr. 
Tyler was ambitious for either, Congress withheld from him 
all support of either, and he smiled with a relish for the plain 
fare which was appropriated for his self-denial, not for his in- 
dulgence. 

Thirdly. The Jefferson dynasty was praised for "patronage 
discarded." Mr. Tyler was denied in many instances the as- 
sistance even of his friends in office. 

Fourthly. Mr. Jeflferson was praised for abolishing internal 
taxes. Mr. Tyler deserved praise for diminishing external 
taxes of the tariff, by forcing the application of the proceeds of 
the sale of the public lands to the payment of the public debt 
and the current expenses of the government. 

Fifthly. Mr. Jefferson was praised for disbanding superfluous 
officers. Mr. Tyler was rot allowed a number sufficient for 
either convenienoe or economy of the public service. 

Sixthly. Mr. Jefferson was praised for renouncing the mo- 
narchical maxim "that a national debt is a national blessing." 
Mr. Tyler threw himself into the breach against the distribution 
of the proceeds of the sale of the public lands whilst the govern- 
ment needed revenue, and whilst the party who elected him 
clamored for protective duties on importations. 

Seventhly. Mr. Jefferson was praised for extinguishing the 
natives' right to one hundred millions of the national domain. 
Mr. Tyler extinguished even more of Indian titles. 

Eighthly. Mr. Jefferson was praised for acquiring, without 
guilt or calamity of conquest, the Territory of Louisiana. With- 
out guilt or calamity of conquest, Mr. Tyler acquired the whole 
of Texas, which the administration of Mr. Jefferson, Mr. Madi- 
son, and Mr. Monroe had not only failed to acquire, but had 
yielded by treaty, and thus he laid the level foundation for the 
acquisition of the whole of New Mexico and California to the 
Pacific by necessary and just conquest. 

Ninthly. Mr. Jefferson was praised for preserving our peace 
amidst great and pressing difficulties. He only deferred the 
war of free trade and sailors' rights to his successor. Mr. Tyler 
settled every controversy with Great Britain in spite of actual 



232 SEVEN DECADES OF THE UNION. 

border hostilities, including the Boundary question and the right 
of search. 

Tenthly. Mr. Jefferson was praised for cultivating the good 
will of the aborigines and for extending civilization to them. 
Mr. Tyler closed the bloodhound war of Florida and brought 
that Territory a sovereign State into the Union. 

Eleventhly. Mr. Jefferson was praised for teaching lessons to 
Barbary. Mr. Tyler's method was higher, in teaching lessons 
to Christian powers in respect to neutral and maritime rights. 

Twelfthly. Mr. Jefferson was praised for preserving inviolate 
the liberty of speech and of the press, " without which genius 
and science are given to man in vain." Mr. Tyler lived to 
better purpose, in showing how a pure patriot could steadfastly 
do his duty to his country and its Constitution and laws and 
liberty, whilst the freedom of speech and of the press ran riot in 
abuse of him and of his measures. And he lived to outlive the 
falsehood of defamation, and the weakness as well as the wick- 
edness of personal and party abuse. His noble triumph was 
the public good, and his only failure was to aspire to office and 
to succeed to a succession. 

It is pleasing to add that the turmoils and troubles of his 
public life did not ruffle his temper or wean his affections from 
the best things in life, the wooing and winning of another pearl 
of the partnership of love — a good and precious wife. Just 
before we parted with him for years, in the month of March, 
1844, he called for us in his plain coach to ride with him on the 
Callorama Hills around Washington. We had not driven far 
before we discovered that his brow was knit into no knots of 
carking cares of state. He turned aside all allusions to politics, 
and showed signs of secrets more sacred and tender. His 
friend Mr. Gardner, of Brooklyn, New York, who was so sud- 
denly killed by the Peacemaker, had, shortly before his death, 
returned from a tour in Europe, with two beautiful, bright 
daughters, and they were, and had been for some time, in 
Washington, young, fresh, and fashioned in all the gossamer 
wings of the foreign costume of the day. We had always 
heai'd that " an old fool is the worst of fools in love-sickness," 



THE SIXTH DECADE. 233 

and lie showed the usual signs of its contortions into ludicrous 
shapes of seeming. He got it out at last that he thought of 
marriage, and wanted to know our opinion on the subject, 

" Well, of course, you have sought and found out some 
honored dame of dignit}', who can bring grace to the White 
House, and add to your domestic comfort ?" 

"Oh, no dame, but a sweet damsel!" 

" Who, pray, of damsel degree, could or should an old Presi- 
dent win ?" 

He told us; and we uttered our astonishment, by asking, 
" Have you really won her ?" 

He replied, "Yes; and why should I not?" 

We answered, that " he was too far advanced in life to be 
imprudent in a love-scrape." 

" How imprudent ?" he asked. 

"Easily: you are not only past the middle age" (he was 
then tifty-four years of age), " but you are President of the 
United States, and that is a dazzling dignity which may charm 
a damsel more than the man she marries." 

" Pooh !" he cried, chuckling. " Why, my dear sir, I am just 
full in my prime 1" 

"Ah, but has John Y. Mason never told you about an old 
friend of his, on the south side of the James, rich and full of 
acres, calling his African waiter, Toney, into council, upon the 
tender topic of his marrying a miss in her teens? Toney shook 
his head, and said, ' Massa, you think you can stand dat V 
' Yes, Toney ; why not ? She is so sweet, so beautiful, that she 
could make me rise from a bed of illness and weakness to woo 
her for a bride ; but I am yet strong, and I can now, as well as 
ever I could, make her happy!' 'Yes ; but, massa,' said Toney, 
' you is now in yow prime, dat's true ; but when she is in her 
prime, where den, massa, will your prime be?' " 

He laughed heartily at Toney's philosophical observation, 
but afterwards in seriousness said that he longed for the re- 
newal of his domestic life, and had been fairly caught by the 
flame of Miss Gardner. We remonstrated that his life was 
renewed in his children ; that he had daughters, lovely daugh- 



234 SEVEN DECADES OF THE UNION. 

ters, full of grace, fit to do the honors of the White House, and 
some of them were the elders of his intended. What if family 
dissent should make domestic jars and his latter days be 
troubled ? 

He had alwa3'S been too tender to the pledges of his first love 
for them ever to withhold from him their filial confidence, or 
deny to him his parental authority to judge and act for his 
own happiness ! 

We saw the game was up, and then said, " We see you are 
bent upon your last love, with or without counsel, and you have 
ever been too lucky for us now to doubt or distrust your fate. 
You are going to marry the damsel, and we are not foolish 
enough to make two enemies by opposing the passion of the 
wooer and the won." 

Thus we parted for four years ; and on the 26th day of June, 
1844, at the church of the Ascension, in New York City, he 
was married to Miss Julia Gardner, whilst we were running 
with the trade-winds between Madeira and Teneriffe. Had we 
known Julia Gardner's virtues, truth, and wisdom, as well as 
we knew the beauty of her form, when her intended consort 
gave us his confidence, we should have taken him by the hand 
and encouraged his steps to her side. She did the honors of 
the White House, with bright tact and grace, for eight months, 
and then retired with him to his country home, at Sherwood 
Forest, in Charles City, doing domestic duty, of wife and 
mother of many children, for seventeen years, until his death 
left her a widow ; and she is still mourning for his loss. She 
has returned lately from Staten Island, to live at last where 
she ever most enjoyed life and love. 

Years after, when we returned from Brazil, in the fall of 
1847, we crossed the Chesapeake to Norfolk, on our way to 
Richmond. At breakfast, in the National Hotel, whom should 
we find at the table but Mr. Tyler and Governor Marcy, of 
New York, hurrying their meal to take the same boat up the 
James? We greeted each other most cordially, and never in 
life did we enjoy a day's travel more than we did that day 
with the two to Wilson's Landing, where Mr. Tyler stopped, 



TEE SIXTH DECADE. 235 

and with Mr. Marcy to Richmond. Mr. Marcy was one of the 
most rem ar liable men we ever knew. We had known him well 
during Mr. Tyler's troubles. He was the special intimate of 
Mr. Gilmer, as Mr. Buchanan was ours, through whom we 
worked in Congress, with Democracy, for all the measures of 
the administration. He had a strongly-marked face, with very 
shaggy eyebrows, which he seemed to train downwards pur- 
posely over his eyes, which were very keen, piercing, and ob- 
servant. His brows seemed to sift his vision, which came 
into his look like spraying beams of light through meshes of 
hair. Thus his expression was cunningly concealed whilst he 
penetrated your thoughts and feelings. He did never exactly 
smile or laugh, but his humor was rare and dry, and, when 
he was pleased, the light of his eye scintillated more sparkling 
through his brow-meshes, and, like Kriss Kringle, he " shook 
like a bowlful of jelly." To look at him in such a mood was 
itself humor. 

We rose when we reached Wilson's Landing, to see Mr. 
Tyler off; and whilst his baggage was being removed to the 
wharf, we observed that he had a double-seated, four-wheeled 
wicker carriage for small children ; it would carry two, and had 
a tongue for extra draft. "Aha!" said we, "it has come to 
that, has it ?" 

Mr. Tyler chuckled, and vauntingly exclaimed, "Yes, you 
see now how right I was ; it was no vain boast when I told 
you I was in my prime : I have a houseful of goodly babies 
budding around me, and if you auxl Marcy will only get off and 
go up with me to Sherwood, I will show you how bountifully 
and rapidly I have been blessed. They are all so near in age 
that they are like stair-steps, and the two youngest are so much 
babies alike that each requires the nurse's coach, and we have 
to have one with two seats !" 

Mr. Marcy's eyes sparkled through the brows, and he looked 
for explanation. We gave it, and told an anecdote to account 
for the ex-President's fruitful paternity, and Mr. Tyler went off 
in the highest spirits, shaking his finger at our raillery, and 
leaving Marcy shaking the jelly of his humor. 



236 SEVEN DECADES OF THE UNION. 

Once afterwards, during the term of Mr. Polk, we had 
another scene with Mr. Marcy, which showed his curious bent 
at times. An old friend, Robert Gr. Scott, of Richmond, a 
burly, genial, good-natured man, of tender heart and able mind, 
and a powerful criminal lawyer of his day, with a brusque 
manner and the voice of a Stentor, was an applicant for the 
consulship of Rio de Janeiro, whilst Mr. Marcy was Secretary 
of State. We had advocated the appointment of Mr. Scott, and 
got the promise of the place for him ; but the nomination was 
delayed until Mr. Scott's patience was exhausted. He had a 
large practice, and the delay embarrassed him with the doubt 
of taking new cases. He went on to Washington, and we, 
happening to be there, went to see Mr. Marcy with him to get 
some definite recognition of his appointment. Mr. Marcy gave 
us audience, and Mr. Scott opened the object of his visit, and 
firmly announced that he was tired at the delay and embarrassed 
by the uncertainty. Mr. Marcy sedately heard him through, 
without a remark ; but we saw the twinkle in his eye through 
the brow-sieve, and when the reply to Mr. Scott came it was 
as we expected, — gruff, dry, hard, and sharp. He said, — 

" Mr. Scott, for every bough of the top of the tree of appoint- 
ments — for the missions plenipotentiary, for example — there 
are about one hundred applicants ; for the middle boughs of 
the chargeships, there are about three hundred applicants ; 
and for the lower limbs of the consulships, there are about one 
thousand applicants. Those who are tired of holding on to the 
upper boughs of expectancy hope to catch upon the places of 
the chargeships, if they fail to get the highest; and those dis- 
appointed in obtaining the chargeships hope to catch on the 
limbs below them. This will enable you to calculate your 
chances for a «onsulship. For the plenipotentiary place but 
one can be appointed, and the ninety and nine fall upon the 
chargeships, and thus the applicants for them become multiplied 
into 399 ; and for the chargeship but one can be appointed, and 
thus 398 have to fall upon the consulships, increasing the 
number of applicants for them by 398, and making the chance 
of a consulship about as 1398 to 1 1" 



THE SIXTH DECADE. 237 

There he paused and shot his glance at poor Mr. Scott, who, 
after the first moment, raised both hands, slapped them on his 
knees, and exclaimed, " Good God, sir I then I may as well go 
home to my clients, and quit the business of office-begging 1" 
And be was about to rise and bid the Secretary adieu, when 
Mr. Marcy raised his finger, and said, " But, Mr. Scott, I have 
advised the President, and I hope the suggestion will be fol- 
lowed, that in my humble opinion the failure to obtain the 
higher- offices shall not be deemed a lien on the lower : thus 
your chance will remain as one to a thousand only for a con- 
sulship I" 

" Well, well," said Scott, " that chance is not worth waiting 
for, and I'll go home." 

" When you do," said Mr. Marcy, " go to prepare for your 
passage to Rio, for your appointment is already determined 
upon." And, as usual, after scanning Scott's joyful surprise, 
he again shook the jelly of his humor. All this was done 
gravely, seriously, without a smile, and completely deceived 
Mr. Scott, who was appointed, and served with honor in the 
office for several years ; and his worthy son succeeded him with 
like credit. 

Mr. Tyler had acquired a very valuable tract of land in Ken- 
tucky before he was President, which, in the latter part of his 
term, he sold for a considerable sum of money, and this enabled 
him to purchase " Sherwood" estate, on James River ; and 
a summer residence, near Hampton, was purchased out of 
means of Mrs. Tyler, and he was thus made comfortable for 
the rest of his life. He laid up nothing from his public life, and 
but for this sale of land in Kentucky he would have been obliged 
to return to the practice of his profession after his presidential 
term expired. His purity was above all suspicion of venality 
or corruption, and his poverty was proof that he retired from 
office without a flaw in his integrity, whatever was said of his 
political course. 

Almost all of his leading friends and constituents in Charles 
City had been decided Whigs, and some of the most influential 
were bitter against him ; but in a very short time he won them 



238 SEVEN DECADES OF THE UNION. 

all back to their former fondness for him. As if to mock his 
retirement from the Presidency, and to express contempt for 
his course, he was appointed overseer of one of the worst roads 
in lowland Virginia. 

Instead of resenting the indignity, intended to belittle him, 
he was tickled with the appointment, took it cheerfully, ordered 
out the hands, very much against the wishes of proprietors, who 
had, all their lives, lazily verified Tom Moore's lampoon upon 
old Virginia roads, — 

"Ruts and ridges, 
And bridges 
Made of planks, 
In open ranks. 
Like old women's teeth !" — 

and so sturdily set to rights the mortar of clay and the jack- 
straws of corduroy that the whole country around rode unjolted 
in praise of his industry and skill. But he worked the roads so 
well and so often that he turned the joke upon the jokers, and 
convinced bis neighbors that he was fit at least for the high- 
way, if not for the high place of the Presidency. By usefulness, 
kindness, utter abnegation of himself, attention to every want 
apd feeling around him, and cheerfulness, he won all hearts, 
and made a social circle in his neighborhood worthy of his 
retirement and tender to him and to his memory. 

From 1845 to 1855 his life was perfectly private, confined to 
his home and his county ; but he kept his eye on the prog- 
nostics of coming events, and was most solicitous ever about 
results which he could not fail to foresee. 

Here we cannot but notice what is said of President Tyler 
by Professor George F. Holmes, LL.D., in a school "History 
of the United States," University Series. He says of him : 

" His experience of public life, ' which public manner breeds,' 
was limited, but sufficient when he found himself accidentally 
at the head of the government, and of a party from which he 
difi"ered on the cardinal questions of the Bank, the Tariff, and 
State Rights." 



TUB SIXTH DECADE. 239 

We do not know what Professor Holmes calls "experience," 
if the time and the part taken up by Mr. Tyler ift " public life" 
did not make him experienced, from the bar to the House of 
Delegates, from the House of Delegates to the House of Repre- 
sentatives, from Congress back to the General Assembly, from 
the General Assembly to the Council-chamber, from the Council- 
chamber to the gubernatorial chair of Virginia, from the State 
Executive to the Senate of the United States, from the seat 
there to the Presidency of the Senate, from the Senate-chamber 
back to the General Assembly, from the General Assembly 
to the Vice-Presidential chair of the United States, and from 
nineteen years of age to the day of his death ! But Pro- 
fessor Hohncs speaks of some sort of " experience" which 
" public manner breeds ;" and we do not know what he means 
by this, unless to say that Mr. Tyler's experience in "public 
life" was not bred by "public manner." He was always in 
" public life," and in the highest places where " public manner 
breeds," and if he had not the largest experience, much less 
such as was only " sufiBcient," it must have been because he 
was inapt to learn ; yet Professor Holmes says he was a man 
of " considerable talents." Yes, of " considerable talents," and 
a tact hardly equaled by any man of his day, and a judgment 
so true and successful that John Tyler's luck was proverbial. 
Public manner added full fifty years' experience to his tact, and 
made him the President of the United States whose adminis- 
tration compares well with any other, from that of Washington 
to that of Grant. This slurring notice of such a man looks like 
gome prejudice of the partisan, and not like the discriminating 
teaching of a professor of history. 

Mr. Tyler had during his term appointed Captain Fremont 
to explore the region of the California Territory, and he claimed 
the discovery of the " South Pass." He had also sent Captain 
Ap Catesby Jones to the coast of the Pacific to watch events 
and operations there. Mr. Polk, his successor, elected as a 
Democrat and as an annexationist, was met at once by the 
Mexican war, a natural consequence of the annexation of Texas. 
General Zachary Taylor was commissioned with the defense of 



240 SEVEN DECADES OF THE UNION. 

the frontier of Texas, Commodore Conner was sent to the har- 
bor of Vera Cruz with a squadron, and Commodore Sloat had 
orders to seize California as soon as hostilities began. Mexico 
declared war in 1846, and the war opened the ball of revolution 
in America. Its tendency and effect was to change the genius 
of the United States. The war was prosecuted with enthusi- 
asm and success, and resulted in the acquisition of Texas, New 
Mexico, and Upper California. This vast domain, and the gold- 
mines of the Sacramento, changed the whole destiny of the 
United States by the signature of the treaty of Guadalupe 
Hidalgo, on the 2d of February, 1848, and peace was pro- 
claimed on the 4th of July, 1848. But the golden fruit was 
guarded by the dragon ; and the immense immigration to 
America, and the enormous addition of wealth to the treasures 
of the world by the California mines, revived the Missouri 
Compromise contention. A Wilmot proviso was introduced, 
and, though it failed, it commenced the struggle which ended 
in civil war. Two more free States were admitted, Iowa and 
Wisconsin, and the beam of the balance of the Union was 
kicked against the South. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

THE SEVENTH DECADE, FROM 1850 TO I860. 

Disparity of the North and South in White Population — General Taylor and 
the Election of 1848 — Mr. Fillmore — " Free Soil" Usurpation in California — 
Mr. Clay's Omnibus Bill — Death of General Taylor — Non-intervention — 
Election of Mr. Pierce in 1852 — Kansas and Nebraska Bills — " Squatter 
Sovcreiguty" — The Modern Republican Party — Convention of Seven South- 
ern States at Nashville, Tennessee, in 1850 — Secession started — Judicial 
Blindness of the South — " Emigrant Aid Societies" and "Blue Lodges" — 
Border AVar enacted by Congress — John Brown of Ossawattomie — Know- 
Nothingism — Election of Mr. Buchanan in 1857 — Dred Scott Case : its Effect 
— Kansas Troubles — Mr. Buchanan's Failure to keep the Peace — Raid on 
Harper's Ferry — Election of 1860 : the Issue — The Plan and Meaning of 
Fighting in the Union — Mr. Tyler's Part-Peace Convention — Mr. Tyler's 
Speech at Baltimore in 1856 — Secession Fears of Halters. 

When Mr. Polk left the Chief Magistrate's chair, in March, 
1849, the population of the United States numbered over 
twenty-three millions, the South having about four millions 
only of whites. 

At the presidential election in 1848 the Democratic party 
was broken by the nomination of Mr. Cass, and the Mexican 
war brought upon the nation the chronic curse of a military 
leader for the highest civil office 

General Taylor, the hero of Buena Yista, was elected ; Mr. 
Fillmore was chosen as Vice-President. The President elect 
was a great " rough and ready" in the field, but ignorant of 
law and politics, and unfitted for the administration of civil 
atfairs. The conquest of Mexico and territorial acquisitions em- 
broiled the nation in a strife for sectional ascendency, and the 
crisis demanded extraordinary experience, judgment, foresight, 
sagacity, and moral courage. Mr. Fillmore had some experience 

16 (241) 



242 SEVEN DECADES OF TEE UNION. 

in Congress, was conscientious and • laborious, but a man of 
mediocre talents and timid, and for " Free Soil." Free Soil 
became ilie watchword and reply of the Northern masses, and 
coupled with the maxim of a " majority to rule," began to grow 
into huge proportions, threatening not only slavery but all con- 
stitutional guarantees and limitations. A large portion of Cali- 
fornia lay south of the compromise line, and yet the adminis- 
tration countenanced the military usurpation, by General Riley, 
of dictating a " free soil" constitution, and that State was ad- 
mitted into the Union excluding slavery. Free Soil had pre- 
sented its first candidate to sow dragon's teeth, and Mr. Clay 
turned pacificator again, to the detriment of the South, as he 
had done before in 1819. By his "Omnibus Bill," hashed up 
into separate measures, in 1^50, the military usui-pation in 
California was sanctioned, and that State was admitted as a 
free State ; Utah and New Mexico were made Territories with- 
out provision as to slavery ; Texas was given ten millions of 
dollars, and might be made into four States, with or without 
slavery ; the slave-trade in the District of Columbia was abol- 
ished; and a law was passed to recover fugitive slaves, and 
that law was nullified everywhere in the Free Soil States 
with impunity and without redress. In the midst o this 
state of things General Taylor died, and the I xecutive office 
devolved on Mr. Fillmore. He was a 1 ederal Whig; tried to 
carry out the compromise measures of Mr. Clay, but they had 
engrafted in them a gross error and wrong, the doctrine of 
Non-Intervention, as it was called by the friends of its author, 
Stephen A. Douglas, and it was impossible for any President 
to control or check the excesses of conflict which grew out of 
them in the Territories. 

That doctrine or feature drew the competing settlers together, 
aspirants against each other's efforts to gain the dominion of 
the Territories, and disorder and danger were the inevitable 
consequences. 

At the same time the spirit of acquisition of more domain 
raged ; Cuba was invaded by Lopez, and Walker attempted to 
seize Lower California and Sonora and Nicaragua. The nation 



THE SEVENTH DECADE. 243 

in every form began to grow fat and kick. Its materialism 
became monstrous. The spirit of the times was unbridled and 
Gerce, and excited apprehensions for the public peace. Those 
apprehensions elected Mr. Pierce in the succeeding campaign, 
in 1852, over General Scott, of the Whigs, and Mr. Hale, of the 
Free Soil party. 

The Democratic party came again into power, and, amidst 
every difiBculty at home and abroad, for a time, at least, pre- 
served the public peace. It settled all difSculties with Mexico, 
with Austria, with Great Britain, and Avith Spain, and made 
the Gadsden treaty. But domestic troubles increased. Mr. 
Douglas consummated the causes of territorial disorder and 
of national discord by his Kansas and Nebraska bill, declaring 
non-intervention by Congress or the United States, leaving the 
settlers to accept or reject slavery, and abrogating the Missouri 
Compromise. This was called " Squatter Sovereignty," and 
it had its Jack Cades without number. This caused the fixed 
forma4;ion of what is called the Republican party. 

The first threatening movement was that of the assembling of 
delegates from seven Southern States, at Nashville, in the year 
1850, which sat from June to November. This convention 
failed to do anything but to start the remedy of secession. 

In 1854 the Kansas-Nebraska bill was passed, and it hastened 
the conflict. 

The government was made, by the principle of non-interven- 
tion, to renounce its functions of protection to persons and 
property in the Territories ; they were left to the stronger 
hands of border struggles for a majority, and to all the fraud 
and force of unprincipled and unpatriotic adventurers on both 
sides. With a judicial blindness unparalleled in human history, 
the South was induced by Mr. Douglas to back this bantling of 
his, worthy only of a demagogue, who concealed his real desire 
for Free Soil by fathering a measure seemingly intended to defeat 
it. The South was first duped and then subdued by it ; but the 
Republicans, led by men of the sagacity of Thayer and other 
leaders like him, took " non-intervention" at its word, and made 
it work out the destruction of slavery and the loss of erery 



244 SEVEN DECADES OF TEE UNION. 

Territory to the South. Both sections were arrayed, and tried 
to obtain the first ground of occupation ; the question was, 
"Which squatter shall be sovereign?" — and the first battle- 
ground was Kansas. The slave State of Missouri, contiguous 
with that Territory, was a first advantage for the South ; but the 
Free-Soilers were well ordered in their action, operated in solid 
concert, with vastly greater wealth and the largest population ; 
they formed immigrant aid societies, and rapidly hastened for- 
Avard squatters furnished not only for settlement but for aggres- 
sion or defense by arms. The "Blue Lodges," on the other side, 
were zealous in the use of opposing means to the designs of the 
immigrant aid societies, aud thus a border war was actually 
enacted by Congress to carry on a fi'ce sectional fight, and it 
raged for the time with all the rancor and venom which ought 
to have been foreseen by men of wisdom, or divined by men 
of good moral instincts. Fraud, force, ruffianism, cruelty, arsons, 
murders, corruption of elections, reigned unbridled, broke up 
settlements and plundered or destroyed villages, and unregu- 
lated warfare skirmished and marauded, seized and captured, ad 
libitum, whilst "non-intervention" caused the strong sovereignty 
of the United States to stand by and look on without raising an 
arm to protect the weak or shield' the right. 

This ravishment of the frontier spawned that fanatic, as 
much sinned against as sinning, John Brown of Ossawattomie, 
who was the special protege of Gerrit Smith, and the forerunner 
of civil war. 

Whilst Governor of the State of Virginia, we foresaw what 
would be the result of these orgies of misrule, and tried to avert 
it. One legislature in Kansas, in July, 1855, passed very strong 
laws for the maintenance of slavery, and the Free-Soilers, in 
October of the same year, at Topeka, formed a Constitution 
excluding slavery. 

The administration of General Pierce used military force, and 
this roused the non-interventionists to excessive resistance, 
until the Topeka legislature was dispersed by military force, 
in 1851. And out of these border troubles the tickets for the next 
ensuing presidential election, in 1856, were formed: the Demo- 



THE SEVENTH DECADE. 245 

crats ran as their candidates Buchanan and Breckinridge, the 
Whigs and "Know-Nothings," combined, ran Mr. Fillmore as 
their candidate, and the Free-Soilers, John C. Fremont. 

In 1854-55, this new organization of Know-Nothings had 
overrun the Northern States, and was arrested only in Virginia. 
It was the most impious and unprincipled affiliation by bad 
means, for bad ends, which ever seized upon large masses of 
men of every opinion and party, and swayed them for a brief 
period blindly, as if by a Yehmgerichte ! At the foundation 
of it were the plans of Exeter Hall, in Old England, acting 
on Williams Hall, in New England, for a hierarchical proscrip- 
tion of religious, for the demolition of some of the clearest 
standards of American liberty, and for a fanatical and sectional 
demolition of slavery. Federalism, in the form of Whiggery, 
seized upon it unscrupulously, as an instrument with which 
to bruise the head of Democracy ; but in all its forms it was 
hideous and revolting, and had only to be exposed to shock 
the moral sense of every sound patriot. The task of exposing 
it fell to our lot, and we spent a year in its destruction. But 
the snake was "scotched, not killed." Our effort was to revive 
the popular and Democratic party, and it was successful for the 
time in electing James Buchanan President of the United States, 
in ISSt, and in postponing civil war for four years. 

Mr. Buchanan came into office in 185Y, with great difficulties 
of administration to be encountered ; but still, if they had been 
met with nerve, and stern reliance upon the love of peace, 
order, and right, they would have been subdued. It was not 
too late to save the Union as formed by the Constitution, and 
the country from the blood-guiltiness of civil war, which broke 
down all the barriers against unlimited power, and all the 
guarantees of civil liberty. He ought to have seen that slavery 
was no longer the question ; the real question was, " Shall the 
Constitution of the United States survive, or shall non-inter- 
vention leave it exposed to the wrong and violence of the brute 
force of a majority on the border?" 

He ought to have seen that this applied not only to the Ter- 
ritories, but also to the States ; not only to the slavery of the 



246 SEVEN DECADES OF THE UNION. 

colored race, but also to the constitutional freedom of the white 
race ; that it was not a sectional question as to which side of 
Mason and Dixon's line should jjrevail in the new settlements, 
but whether the States themselves should continue to exist 
as united under the Constitution, or whether the war-power, 
necessarily forced into action by non-intervention, should be 
allowed to supersede the civil laws and institutions. Federal 
and State, of the Union. In a word, he should have intervened 
to "keep the peace." But he was hesitating and timid, and an 
event which occurred upon the very first day after his inaugura- 
tion alarmed him out of his propriety. The Supreme Court of 
the United States, on the 6th of March, 1857, decided the "Dred 
Scott case," that a negro was not a citizen of the United States, 
and that the Missouri Compromise was unconstitutional. This 
added fuel to the flames of excitement, and opened all the ter- 
ritory south of 36° 30' to the immigrant aid societies to increase 
the Free-Soil States, and this especially caused Mr. Buchanan 
to be too cautious and temporizing in his policy. The Kansas 
troubles descended to his administration, and he was not coura- 
geous enough to meet them manfully. The Topeka Constitution 
was rejected by Congress and the administration ; in fact, Mr. 
Buchanan himself gave countenance to the iniquities of the pro- 
slavery Constitution of Lecompton, in November, 1857. That 
Constitution was a fraud, gross, palpable, and tyrannical, and 
the Southern settlers were as guilty in this attempt at usurpa- 
tion as the Free-Soilers were in the Topeka attempt. Having 
been active and efficient in the nomination and election of Mr. 
Buchanan, we urged upon him most earnestly the justice and 
policy of setting that Lecompton outrage aside, and of protect- 
ing the purity and freedom of the territorial elections ; but in 
vain. He could not be prevailed upon to interpose for the right, 
and allowed the struggle to go on, until the people of Kansas, 
after rejecting the Lecompton fraud, finally adopted their Con- 
stitution of Wyandott, in July, 1859, and were admitted into 
the Union, January, 1861. It was about this period of the 
.highest inflammation of the cancer of Kansas that the raid of 
John Brown upon Harper's Ferry took place, in 1859. He had 



TEE SEVENTH DECADE. 247 

been outraged in Kansas, his home had twice been invaded, 
one of his sons had been driven to madness by cruelty, and his 
youngest son hr.d been butchered; and he became frenzied to 
the extreme recklessness of the raid, which capped the climax 
of aggression, and let slip the dogs of war for the time, and 
blew a bugle-blast from a gallows platform of convicts, which 
resounded from one end of the continent to the other, and 
roused every evil passion for the conflict at the next presidential 
election. It is due to ourself to say here that we did our full 
duty in that trouble. We had prepared beforehand for the 
worst, and hesitated not a moment to call out the militia to 
enforce the laws and to preserve the peace. A portion of the 
militia had anticipated our action, and kept the marauders 
hemmed in until the regular forces captured them. The Presi- 
dent, fearing that our action would be too decisive if allowed to 
reach the scene in time, hastened Colonel Lee (Robert E.) for- 
ward with a squad of marines, and he gallantly captured Brown, 
and a worse man, Mitchell, killing twelve, including one of 
Brown's sons, with the loss of one marine. We should have 
reached Harper's Ferry from Richmond with several volunteer 
companies before him, but were stopped purposely, it was 
thought, at Washington City, in order to give Lee time to do 
the service by the United States troops, without the interpo- 
sition of the State authorities. This was Mr. Buchanan's only 
act of intervention, and it was a false step, vain and too late. 
We had urged him to interpose in time to prevent the extension 
of the trouble beyond the Territories ; we had spent months 
of labor in endeavoring to expose the destructiveness of the 
Douglas doctrine to the South, in a treatise upon State and 
Federal Relations, addressed to a friend in Alabama, and pub- 
lished it at considerable expense in Richmond ; the lamented 
O. Jennings Wise had, by his pen, in the Richmond Enquirer 
and by pamphlet publications, endeavored to convince the South 
of the Lecompton fraud and non-intervention error, and of the 
apprehended consequences of both; and every effort was made 
to prompt Mr. Buchanan to perform his duty of protection to 
the whole nation. But he failed to do aught but capture John 



248 SEVEN DECADES OF THE UNION. 

Brown, aud that only applied the fuse to the bomb-shell of civil 
war. He and Mr. Douglas split the Democratic party ; the 
Whigs were demoralized by the Know-Nothiugs, and the Re- 
publican party was aggrandized in numbers from all factions 
in the North ; it had already the pulpit and press and public 
schools and the chief wealth of parties in the North ; and it is 
rather a wonder that Abraham Lincoln was not elected by a 
larger vote than that of 180 out of 303 electoral votes in the 
contest of 1860. 

Three Free-Soil States had been added — Kansas, Oregon, 
and Minnesota — during the administration of Mr. Buchanan ; 
the population of the United States had increased to thirty-one 
and a half millions, and the white population of the States 
which seceded was about five millions only. A majority of 
fifty-seven electoral votes was small in proportion to this state 
of things, and the presidential canvass convulsed the whole 
nation. The election itself was not the cause of the convulsion 
or of the revolution. The causes had accumulated from 1819. 
The Southern States felt compelled to secede from a sense of 
safety. Slave property was not all that was involved; it was, 
indeed, as nothing when compared with what was involved in 
the issue of that election. The whole theory of the govern- 
ment was involved in that fatal word coyistruction, which the 
South foresaw would gain a prefix which would make it " recon- 
struction.^^ The Constitution had already constructed a govern- 
ment, which government had construed it into " construction 
construed," and every man of sagacity saw that this was what 
we now endure — "reconstruction." Physics prevailed over 
metaphysics. The progress of the country had been so rapid 
and immense as to change the entire character of our population. 
Moral philosophy and constitutional law had fallen before steam 
and telegraphs and railroads and territorial acquisitions and 
unprecedented immigration. Free Soil was a majority, and a 
majority brooked no limitations to its will. Nothing would be 
any safer than slavery would be. Slavery of the colored race 
would be destroyed, and the freedom of the white race would 
lose all its guarantees against the abuses of a majority. 



THE SEVENTH DECADE. 249 

Such was the course of events which rushed us into civil 
war. The South itself was not united upon secession. A 
large portion of our people desired total separation ; but a num- 
ber of respectable and experienced thinkers deprecated secession, 
saw no necessity for it, but instead much weakness in it, and 
counseled to " fight in the Union." And this brings us to scan 
the part which Mr. Tyler, then in his retirement, took in the 
contest. 

We looked to his opinions with great hopefulness, knowing his 
remarkable tact and talent for a suggestive policy. His counsel 
was that of forbearance and peace. He was a sincere lover of 
the Union, but devoted to the States and their rights. He relied 
with great faith on the wisdom and strength of the constitu- 
tional provisions for the common protection, and trusted in the 
patriotic motives and common sense of the popular mind for 
our escape from impending dangers. He urged a " Peace Con- 
vention," and, we believe, was mainly instrumental in getting 
up that which afterwards met at Washington. He was active 
in urging the legislature and Governor of Virginia to call upon 
the States to assemble in order to avert the present dangers, 
and to amend the Constitution of the United States so as to 
prevent like crises in the future. 

Virginia made the appeal for peace in vain. Her call was 
not met by all the States, and its failure emboldened the North- 
ern majority to insist upon their extreme measures. The fact 
was, the time was already lost for preventing war. The exodus 
had come. There was no compromising the question of slavery, 
and its violent abolition would necessarily destroy all the con- 
stitutional moorings of the country. Thousands in the slave- 
holding States would never have risked one drop of blood for 
the inglorious privilege of being masters of slaves ; but they 
dreaded the thought of being dwarfed in the Union, and being 
made slaves themselves by a host of new-comers to the conti- 
nent, who were not imbued by the spirit of our fathers, or the 
spirit and understanding of our institutions. The fate of the 
slavery of the colored race was sealed, and it could not secure 
any guarantees for the future ; and if the Constitution could be 



250 SEVEN DECADES OF THE UNION. 

set aside and violated in respect to the rigbt of slave property, 
it could be as to any right or possession whatever. The Federal 
Congress and Executive and Judiciary were combined against 
slavery, and of course would unite on all the means to abolish 
it, however much they invaded the sovereignty and equality 
of the States in the minority of the Union. And the Free-Soil 
States themselves had already defiantly broken the faith of the 
Federal compact. We were willing that Mr. Tyler and others 
should make the overture and attempt at peace, but from the 
moment of the Lecompton fraud, and the Kansas wars, and the 
John Brown raid, we began to prepare for the worst. We 
looked carefully to the State Armory ; and whilst we had the 
selection of the State quota of arms, we were particular to take 
field ordnance instead of altered muskets ; and when we left the 
gubernatorial chair there were in the State Armory, at Rich- 
mond, 85,000 stand of infantry arms and 130 field-pieces of artil- 
lery, besides $30,000 worth of new revolving arms, purchased 
from Colt. 

Our decided opinion was, that a preparation of the Southern 
States in full panoply of arms, and prompt action, would have 
prevented civil war. The story is told, and still believed by 
some, that Mr. Floyd, whilst Secretary of War under Mr. 
Buchanan, distributed a large supply of arms to the Southern 
States. The story is a doubtful one ; but, if true, it is certain 
that none of the arms were supplied to Virginia ; and the mis- 
fortune of this State was, that her whole militia system had 
been destroyed by an unprecedented dereliction of duty and by 
the folly of her legislature. A prompt, bold, defiant, armed 
attitude would have prevented war, we repeat; but the peace 
policy prevailed in Virginia ; whilst the Cotton States were bent 
on what they insanely imagined would be peaceful secession, — 
mistaking Cotton for King, or for even money or credit! 

In a lecture delivered before the Maryland Institute for the 
Promotion of the Mechanic Arts, on the 20th March, 1855, at 
Baltimore, Mr. Tyler, in speaking of the pacification by which 
the Force Bill of General Jackson's administration had been 
rendered harmless, said, " At another day that same flag [the 



THE SEVENTH DECADE. 251 

Palraetto, of South Carolina], as it waved in full glory over 
the plains of Mexico, caught the gaze of an admiring world, 
and impressed, as I trust, upon the heart and mind of America 
the principle that, in differences of opinion that may and will 
spring up between the States, the last counselor should be the 
pride of power, and the last mediator should be force." And 
he concluded that lecture by saying, " Rome, in her day of 
power, claimed to be the mistress of the world, and Alex- 
ander wept that he had no more worlds to conquer ; and yet 
neither the one nor the other looked down from their height of 
power upon possessions more extensive or more fertile than 
those which we enjoy. I mention these things not in a spirit 
of vain boasting, but for a far different and more interesting 
purpose : it is to induce a still deeper impression of love and 
veneration for our political institutions, by exhibiting our coun- 
try as it was, and is, — and will be, if we are true to the great 
trust committed to our hands. I listen to no raven-like croak- 
ings foretelling ' disastrous twilight' to this confederacy. I 
will give no audience to those dark prophets who profess to 
foretell a dissolution of the Union. I would bid them back to 
their gloomy cells, to await until the day shall come, which, I 
trust, will assuredly come, when this great republic shall have 
reached the fullness of its glory. I will not adopt the belief 
that a people so favored by Heaven will most wickedly and 
foolishly throw away ' a pearl richer than all their tribe.' No ! 
when I open the book of the Sibyls, there is unfolded to my 
sight, in characters bright and resplendent and glorious and 
vivifying, the American confederacy in the distant future, 
shining with increased splendor, — the paragon of governments, 
the exemplar of the world. If I misinterpret the prophecies, 
let me live and die in my error. Let it rather be thus than 
awaken me to an opposite reality, full of the horrid specters of 
strong governments, sustained by bristling fortifications, large 
standing armies, heavy burdens on the shoulders of industry, 
the sword never at I'est in its scabbard, and the ear deafened 
ever by the roar of cannon. No ! leave me for the remnant of 
my days the belief that the government and institutions handed 



252 SEVEN DECADES OF THE UNION. 

down to us by our fathers are to be the rich legacy of our chil- 
dren and our children's children to the latest generation. If 
this be a delusion, let me still embrace it as a reality. Keep at 
a distance from me that gaunt and horrible form which is en- 
gendered in folly and nurtured in faction, and which slakes its 
thirst in the tears of the broken hearts and appeases its appe- 
tite on the blasted hopes of mankind." 

Alas ! he did misinterpret the prophecies ; the gods loved 
him too well not to grant his prayer, and did not let him live 
to see "the specters of strong governments." He was taken 
away from the touch of subjugation, — he never tasted the bitter- 
ness of its ashes. His heart was not broken ; he died in hope, 
and was never forced to see the " gaunt and horrible form" of 
that despotism of Congress which has destroyed the Constitu- 
tion, States, laws, and liberties of the people of the United 
States. He was too much for forbearance, peace, and com- 
promise ; and that state of mind of most leading men in Vir- 
ginia caused us to be found unprepared for inevitable' war. Yet 
these same men, when forced to resort to an ultimate mode of 
preventing coming calamities and redressing past or preventing 
future wrongs, were those who betook themselves to secession 
rather than to the wiser remedy of "fighting in the Union." 
They did not and could not foresee in time that they " must 
fight," and blindly persisted in believing that " secession might 
and would be peaceful." It was a delusion causing war, and 
war unprepared for. If they had seen that the war was inevi- 
table, they would have prepared for it; and if at the very be- 
ginning they had been prepared for it, and had first " drawn the 
' sword instead of blowing the horn," there would have been no 
■ war. That was the first advantage in the idea of " fighting in 
the Union." The prompt, prepared attitude of war would 
have brought about a peaceable adjustment, which would have 
sheathed the drawn sword in the interest of the Union, without 
a drop of blood. This was the only hope of peace, and this 
would have made peace, unless war, in the eye of Omniscience, 
was the only means of abolishing the slavery of the colored 
race in the country. And if it was the only providential means 



THE SEVENTH DECADE. 253 

of God to compel the exodus of the negro race from bondage, 
yet, if we had been ready and prepared for it, we might have 
enforced terms which, while they yielded the emancipation of 
bondmen, might have saved freemen of the white race from 
chains, and might have preserved the Constitution of the 
United States, the rights of the States, and the liberties of all 
the people. 

But with them, Mr. Tyler among the rest, unfortunately, 
to " fight in the Union" was to fight with halters around their 
necks, — was treason. This was the great error of the Southern 
leaders. It did not proceed from cowardly or selfish motives. 
They thought themselves morally bound to assume the attitude 
which would most effectually preserve their constituents from 
the personal consequences of penalties, forfeitures, seizures, and 
confiscations. Their error was in supposing that to fight in the 
Union would be rebellious, and that to secede would make the 
war iutergential. In the first case, they conceived, we would 
be rebels, — hostes ; in the last we would be enemies, — inimici 
non hostes. This, we repeat, was a great error, both of judg- 
ment and of law. 

In point of judgment, their declaring themselves absolved 
from the obligations of the Union would not make them so. 
Success alone in arms could do that; and if their enemies suc- 
ceeded in arms, the conquerors would not fail to treat them 
either as enemies or as rebels, or as both, as they might elect. 
But they thought themselves safer from the halters of treason 
by seceding, in case their enemies should succeed. It was in 
vain urged that there was a greater danger threatening them 
than that of halters, — the danger of the application of the abso- 
lute rules of the jus belli, — of confiscation of the property of 
persons, and of the annihilation of States, and the other opera- 
tions inter gentes " vi concitate belli ;^^ that the jus belli was an 
absolute rule under the laws of nations, and knew no limitations ; 
whilst the rule of Confederate or United States in conflict, with- 
out a separation or secession, would be governed by the law of 
internal sovereignty, the Constitution of the United States, with 
all its guarantees, limitations, prohibitions, and restrictions. 



254 SEVEN DECADES OF THE UNION. 

Blockade and non-intercourse, for example, would be a very 
different thing under the law of external sovereignty, the law of 
nations, from what it would be under the law of internal sover- 
eignty, the Constitution of the United States; and we could 
claim all the benefits of existing organization in the post-ofBce, 
in the custom-house, in treaties with foreign powers, and in 
the eminent domain. This was urged in vain, and could not 
be understood. The halter of treason hung before their eyes 
and turned them away from their true policy. 

In point of law we urged the true views of our composi- 
tive system of government, a constitutional Union of separate 
and independent States, before and since the war, in vain. 
The courts of "Virginia and the United States, since the sur- 
render, have been as wild in their decisions respecting our 
political law as were the Confederate leaders before the war 
began. They have made the late conflict of the States of the 
Union a perfect nondescript revolution, — internal, external, in- 
tergential, civil ; having fixed rules and exceptional ; absolute 
and relative ; international and intra-territorial ; under munici- 
pal and prize ; under the constitutional law and under the inter- 
national law ; mixed, confused, arbitrary, and whatever dicta- 
tion on the one side and servile fear on the other may prescribe 
or accept. 

We often conferred with Mr. Tyler, especially upon what that 
law was. He always admitted the truth of our views, yet, like 
others, would not agree to their adoption and application. 



CHAPTER XIV. 

THE SEVENTH DECADE, FROM 1S50 TO I860. 

The Essential Rights of States — The Original Condition of the several United 
States — What Change did the Constitution of the United States make in 
their Sovereign Condition? — The War-Power of the United States — War- 
Power and the Power to Repel Invasion in Constitutional Contrast with the 
Powers to execute the Laws and to suppress Insurrection — The Prohibitions 
to the States — The Error of Secession — Instances of Insurrection and Rebel- 
lion — A State defined — The Primary and Secondary Elements of a State — 
The Conflict of States never an Insurrection: of these States, it is Internal 
or Civic AVar, governed by the Law of Internal Sovereignty — The States in- 
vaded, and their Duties in the Case — Liimici non Hoatea — Dorr's Rebellion. 

Or all the absolute and eonditioual rights of States, the most 
essential and important, and the first, is the right of self-pres- 
ervation. This is not only a right with respect to other States, 
but a duty with respect to its own members. It necessarily in- 
volves all other incidental rights which are essential as means 
to give eifect to the principal end. Among these is the right to 
require the military services of all its people ; to levy troops ; 
to maintain a naval force ; to build fortifications, and to enforce 
and collect taxes for all these purposes of self-defense. And the 
exercise of these absolute sovereign rights can be controlled 
only by the equal, correspondent rights of other States, or by 
special compacts, freely entered into with others, to modify the 
exercise of these rights. Such is the received law, as laid down 
by the best modern authority, the "American Elements," I may 
say, of Wheaton. 

To these preliminary principles the fact must be added that, 
prior to the formation of the Constitution of the United States, 
such were the rights of each and every State of this Union, 
among other independent, sovereign States of Christendom. Vir- 

( 255 ) 



256 SEVEN DECADES OF TEE UNION. 

ginia, for example, undoubtedly had the right of self-preserva- 
tion and of self-defense, with all the incidental means ; and it is 
also equally true that she as a State prompted and promoted 
the formation of the Constitution of the United States expressly 
to create " a more perfect Union," for the very purpose of en- 
abling her more effectually to protect and defend herself, and to 
protect and defend each and all of the States, and to preserve 
the rights and liberties of all. 

Then the question arose. How far did the formation of the 
Constitution of the United States modify or restrain this abso- 
lute sovereign right of self-defense and self-preservation in the 
several States of the Union ? 

The Constitution gave charge of the " common defense" to 
Congress. 

To Congress was granted the power to declare war, grant 
letters of marque and reprisal, and make rules concerning cap- 
tures on laud and on water ; to raise and support armies, and to 
provide and maintain a navy ; to make rules for the government 
and regulation of the land and naval forces, and to provide for 
the calling forth the militia to execute the laws of the Union, 
suppress insurrection, and repel invasion, and for organizing, 
arming, and disciplining the militia, and governing such part of 
them as may be employed in the service of the United States ; 
but the States were to appoint the officers, and to train them 
according to discipline prescribed by Congress. 

Now, it is palpable that such of these provisions as relate 
to war and its means and incidents, and to "repelling inva- 
sion," apply only to " foreign war," or war inter gentes. And 
it is equally plain that whatever force of armies or navies, or 
"captures on land and on water," or "calling forth the militia" 
against our own citizens it authorizes, are not for the purposes 
or ends or uses of war, but were authorized for two purposes 
alone, and those domestic and internal only, — first, to " execute 
the laivs ;^^ second, "to suppress insurrection." 

War, to make it valid, must be declared. No ivar could be 
declared against the States of the Union or against their citi- 
zens by the Congress of the United States. 



THE SEVENTH DECADE. 257 

It was folly to imagine that Congress would be so unwise 
and artless as to declare war against secession. It would have 
been at once to acknowledge the fact of a separation and the 
right to secede. It was obvious that Congress would proclaim 
an insurrection to be suppressed, and would call forth forces to 
execute the laws ; that it would declare no war ; and that it 
would in any event, with or without secession, operate on 
individual citizens in personam, and hold them accountable for 
treason and amenable to its penalties. There could be nothing 
gained to the citizens, then, by secession, and the whole prestige 
of the Union would be lost to the popularity and probable suc- 
cess of the Confederacy. The Constitution and Union were 
the best and only guardians of the people against the dangers 
and trials and halters for treason. 

By the Constitution, Congress had no power to declare war 
against any State or States of the Union, but, on the contrary, 
was rather restrained from so doing. The militia, or military 
or naval forces, could be called forth for no domestic or home 
purpose except either " to execute the laws" or " to suppress 
insurrection ;" and there were restraints upon that power even, 
since the States alone could appoint militia officers and train the 
militia. Foreign war and the repulsion of invasion stand in 
the Constitution in pointed contrast with "the execution of the 
laws'''' and " the suppression of insurrection." "War and inva- 
sion apply to the territory and rights of the nation as against 
foreign powers only. The execution of the laws and the sup- 
pression of insurrection apply to the internal sovereignty and its 
powers respecting its own citizens and States. No government 
has the power of making war upon or invading its own territory 
or people. It is absurd even to suppose that the States in 
forming the Constitution ever meant to give, or ever did give, 
the power to Congress to make war upon and invade them. 
Congress was given the power to wage war and to repel in- 
vasion, to protect the States and their people against foreign 
powers ; and it was given the power to execute the laws of 
the Union and the States, and to suppress insurrection against 
the authorities of either the States or the Union. 

n 



258 SEVEN DECADES OF THE UNION. 

The Congress could not make war upon the States or their 
people, or invade them ; but yet internal and intra-territorial 
war is expressly provided for in the tenth section, third para- 
graph, of the first article of the Constitution, which provides, 
" No State shall, without the consent of Congress, lay any 
duty of tonnage, keep troops or ships of war in time of peace, 
enter into any agreement or compact with another State, or 
with a foreign power, or engage in war, unless actually invaded, 
or in such imminent danger as will not admit of delay." 

This conditional and limited, or contingent, prohibition to 
the States proves that, without its inhibition, each State would 
have retained all these powers unlimited ; and it shows that 
the States may now exercise them all " in time of war," and 
that it leaves in each State still the power to lay tonnage 
duties, to keep troops or ships of war in time of war, to enter 
into any agreement or compact with another State, or with a 
foreign power, or to engage in loar, when actually invaded, or 
when in such imminent danger as will not admit of delay. 
Thus, on the contingencies named, each State had reserved the 
power of war, internal or external, against any State or States 
in the family of nations at home or abroad. Each State, in 
given exigencies of invasion or imminent danger, had retained 
her power of self-defense and of war, not only as against for- 
eign states, but as against sister States or their common agent, 
the Federal government. 

And the very object of this reservation is so plain that the 
effect of its omission would have been to expose a State to the 
necessity of passive submission to wrongs and inequalities in the 
Union, and her citizens to the dreaded danger of halters for 
treason. Her reserved right to declare war, at home or abroad, 
when invaded or in imminent peril, retained to her as a State the 
sovereign right of self-protection, and to her citizens as a people 
the shield of her sovereignty against treason, its infamy, and 
its penalties. Each State, as one of the principals to the com- 
pact of the Constitution, might well be expected to retain such a 
power ; but she could not rationally be supposed to have ever 
given the power to her own creature in part, the Congress, to 



THE SEVENTH DECADE. 259 

declare war upon her and to wrong and invade her without the 
rig-ht of redress. Thus, there was a power of internal war, but 
that power was not in Congress ; it was in the States, and retained 
bj them. And this right of the States, to protect themselves 
against actual invasion and from imminent danger not admit- 
ting of delay, necessarily made each State the judge of actual 
invasion or of the imminent danger, without delaying for the 
consent of Congress, on her responsibility as a State to her 
co-States and to the Union. It was the right of the conflict of 
States, for cause, with each other or with Congress, in cases 
of actual invasion or of imminent danger not admitting of 
delay. It was the right of civil war between States, with 
each other, or with the Congress or Federal Executive, to re- 
dress wrongs in the cases named, as well as with foreign 
powers or with the Indian tribes. It was a right under the 
Constitution, and there was no necessity to secede in order to 
save citizens from halters. The error of secession was, as has 
since been proved, that it could not save the citizens from the 
accusation of treason, and that it gave a pretext for applying the 
absolute rule of the jus belli against the States in respect to 
personal rights and to property. It could not insure the safety 
of the citizen, and would annihilate the State rights by the 
rule of war inter gentes, and it has annihilated them. To 
avoid the halter of treason it ran the State into the vortex of 
the jus belli. If each Confederate State had remained in 
the Union, and declared war for actual invasion and for immi- 
nent danger not admitting of delay, her individual citizens, 
who took up arms under her laws for her defense, could not 
have been made to answer for her acts, except as enemies in 
war, not as hostes chargeable with treason and felony. The 
States in the conflict of revolution were responsible to one 
another, and their rights were relative only, not absolute, in 
the Union ; but the individual persons who were their subjects 
and citizens could not be made responsible either in person 
or in property for the acts of their States. They could be held 
responsible only for their individual acts in violation of the 
rules of war. If not enlisted in the war, they, still in the 



260 SEVEN DECADES OF THE UNION. 

TJnion, were under the protection of the Constitution ; and if 
in the army or navy or civil service of the resisting or revolu- 
tionary State, they would have been entitled to the character 
of inimici non hostes, and could not have been punished as 
felons and traitors. Otherwise, the compositive system of 
government of the United States would be the most dangerous 
and oppressive in the world. The citizen, however innocent 
and bona fide his acts, for or against his State, would be be- 
tween Scylla and Charybdis, and liable to be punished for 
treason whether he sided with his State or against her. No 
construction could permit such perversion of every idea of alle- 
giance and protection. Where States are in conflict with one 
another, their citizens on the high seas are not pirates, and on 
land are not felons. They are then simply and technically 
"enemies." " States^^ only are responsible in the conflict of 
States, either at home or abroad ; and, if the general govern- 
ment had the power to call on the citizens of the revolutionary 
State to execute its laws against her and to suppress insurrec- 
tion, and the State also had the right of war to repel actual 
invasion and to call on her own citizens to defend her against 
imminent danger not admitting of delay, then no sane person 
could risk a residence in the country, the moment a civil war 
began, because he would be exposed to the penalties of treason, 
take whatever part he might, either by force or choice. The 
truth is, the conflict of States can never, in any form, be called 
or treated as " insurrection." Without the conflict of States, 
there never can be such a thing as war, either external or in- 
ternal; and where there is war between States, the persons 
of their citizens or subjects are treated always as inimici 
non hostes. 

Where subjects and citizens unorganized as a State rise up 
against the sovereignty under which they are protected, and to 
wliich they owe allegiance, then and then only can they be law- 
fully treated as hostes non inimici. Belligerency, in its largest 
sense, means any organized conflict of people in arms in consid- 
erable numbers sufiicient to exceed mere riot, rout, and unlaw- 
ful assemblage, in which they have not the sanction or authority 



THE SEVENTH DECADE. 261 

of a State either de facto or de jure. But mere conflict in arms, 
bj people who have no sanction or authority of a body politic 
called a State, is not war. If it is carried on at sea, it is piracy; 
if on land, it is felony and treason ; but no acts of war between 
States are either piracy or treason. Their citizens, bound by 
force as well as by law to obey the commands of the sovereign 
of their domiciles, cannot be deemed traitors; and the Stales 
themselves in conflict cannot be punished for treason. A State 
cannot commit such a crime. 

The instances of insurrection and rebellion involving treason, 
in this country, are numerous enough to illustrate every shade 
of difference between them and the war between States in 
which no treason can be committed. There are the instances 
of Shays's Rebellion in Massachusetts; of the Whisky Insurrec- 
tion in Pennsylvania ; of the State of Franklin in the Territory — 
now the State — of Tennessee ; of the Hartford Convention iu 
Massachusetts ; of Georgia in the Tassels and Cherokee dis- 
turbance ; and of the more modern and striking case of the 
Dorr Revolution in Rhode Island. In every instance, the case 
was where mere citizens and subjects, or individual persons, 
numerous and having organization, but wanting the sanction 
and authority and orders or form of a State, rose in resistance 
against their governments, State and Federal ; they were in- 
surgents, rebels, traitors, what law defines to be "/losfes," as 
contradistinguished from " enemies," because there was no ^^ 

war. Dorr, for example, had full and complete organization ; ^ 
he had, it was supposed, a majority of the numerical, though 
not of the conventional, people to back his truly republican claim 
of political rights against an oligarchic King Charles charter, 
odious to the ideas of American liberty ; and he was, to a great \n 

extent, quietly permitted to bring his organization to the point ^ 

of popular revolution against the State. But neither his 
nor any other insurrection in our history had the forms and 
authority of a State. In no case was there a conflict of States 
with one another. A State consists of certain primary and sec- 
ondary elements of construction and organization, which neces- 
sarily give it the power of making war ; but no mere associa- 



X 



V 



<N 



262 SEVEN DECADES OF THE UNION. 

tion of persons, without the attributes of a State, can make war. 
If they take up arms against their own governments, or against 
foreign powers or people even, thej are alike hostes non 
inimici. But a State cannot be a traitor, or guilty of treason, 
nor can her citizens be traitors for obeying her mandates. Any 
organization to be a State must have, — 

1st. A territory with defined and acknowledged boundaries. 

2d. A people, defined by citizenship. 

3d. A people, defined by franchise. The one is the numerical 
people, and the other is the conventional and constitution- 
making people of a republican State. 

4th. Her conventional people, or voters, are the source of her 
laws, organic and statute, and they alone possess her conven- 
tional power. 

5th. Her constitution of government founded and resting 
alone on her conventional power. 

Of these five cardinal and primary elements, the existence 
and essence of a republican State consist, and on these they 
depend. They are fundamental and organic, conventional and 
constitutional. The constitution depends on the convention, 
and the convention on the fi-anchise, and the franchise on the 
citizenship, and the citizenship on the defined place and the 
time of residence. But, in addition to these primary elements, 
the body politic, called a State, must necessarily have certain 
secondary attributes, which may be styled most properly " mu- 
nicipal :" 

1st. A legislative power, to pass statute laws in conformity 
with her constitution. 

2d. An executive power, to execute her constitutional statutes. 

3d. A judicial power, to construe and ever vigilantly to guard 
her constitution, and to decide upon public and private rights 
and wrongs, according to known and established rules and pre- 
cedents in cases of judicial cognizance. 

These three attributes constitute municipal government. By 
these a State exerts her powers and acts, but the life of the State 
and her being are in the primary elements; and these organic and 
municipal elements combine to form the government of a republi- 



THE SEVENTH DECADE. 263 

can State. Her government is distinct from her sovereignty ; 
the former rests upon her constitution, and her constitution rests 
upon her sovereignty, which consists in her conventional power. 
Her municipal government may be driven away from its seat 
of power, but her constitution and her sovereignty, or conven- 
tional power, still remain. Rebellion, insurrection, has nothing 
but a numerical people, has but mere numbers of persons ; it 
has no territory, no franchise, no conventional power, no con- 
stitution, no municipal government of a State. But each and 
every State of the eleven States in the civil war of the late 
revolutionary conflict of States in this Union had all the primary 
and secondary elements of sovereignty, — territory, citizens, 
voters, conventional power to frame a constitution of govern- 
ment, a constitution of government formed and guaranteed by 
the United States to be republican, and a municipal government 
giving laws over an immense space to millions of population, 
deciding upon laws and rights and wrongs under them, and 
executing them, and with the reserved power of peace and war, 
in the categories and contingencies above described. 

The plain distinction between the cases of States in conflict 
with one another or with the Federal government, and the cases 
of individual persons in conflict with either, was blindly over- 
looked at the very beginning of the war, and since has been 
broken down, and despotically on the one side, or timidly on the 
other, disregarded. It has been so confused by error and igno- 
rance and by usurpation since the war, that our sense has been 
astounded by the terms " rebel enemies" applied by judges of 
the Supreme Court of the United States I In other words, or 
rather to explain the practical and intended meaning of this 
solecism in terms, they have declared citizens rebels and States 
enemies, to hang the former as traitors, and to annihilate the 
rights of the latter by reconstruction, as enemies subject to the 
arbitrary and absolute rule of the jus belli. They would not 
observe the rule of law in the case even of the lowest corpora- 
tion, — that where the stockholders constitute the company, and 
the managers and officers are their agents, necessary for the 
conduct and management of the aflairs of the company, but not 



264 SEVEN DECADES OF THE UNION. 

essential to its existence as such, nor forming an integral part, 
the corporation exists per se, so far as is requisite to the mainte- 
nance of perpetual succession, and holding its franchises, the 
non-existence of the managers not implying the non-existence 
of the corporation. The corporate functions may be suspended 
for want of the means of action, but the capacity to restore its 
functionaries, by means of election, remains. So a State may, 
by internal war, by epidemic, or otherwise, lose its governor, 
the members of its legislature, the members of its judiciary, 
and all the chief officers or functionaries of its several municipal 
departments of government, but still the body politic remains, 
consisting of the five primary elements of a State, and its capa- 
city to restore its functionaries, its mere municipal officers, by 
means of election, remains. Ay, and if there be not function- 
aries sufficient to call forth the conventional people to the polls, 
then the Constitution of the United States guarantees that each 
State of the Union shall have a republican form of government, 
and it becomes the duty of the Congress of the United States — 
not to assume to make the Constitution for the State, for she 
has one already ; nor to dictate who shall be her voters or con- 
ventional people, for they are already defined by the State Con- 
stitution ; but — simply to call forth her voters, already consti- 
tuted by an existing State Constitution, either to hold a conven- 
tion of their own, or to elect the functionaries necessary to 
carry on the municipal government according to the State 
laws. All this beauty and harmony and symmetry of our com- 
positive system has been destroyed by the timidity which, be. 
fore the war, to escape halters plunged into the jus belli ; and 
by the tyranny which, during and since the war, has, to suit its 
ends as occasion required, used and applied all the laws of 
treason, insurrection, rebellion, and war in confusion wosre 
confounded. 

The late civil revolution of States, or conflict of States in 
civil war, was governed by a very different rule from that which 
governs either rebellion or insurrection at home, or even a war 
iyiter gentes. And here the wisdom and beauty of the Constitu- 
tion of the United States, harmonizing State and Federal relor- 



THE SEVENTH DECADE. 265 

tions, and the relations of citizens to the States and the Union, 
rise up to the admiration of all who understand its provisions, 
and who are just and republican enough to execute them faith- 
fully. States, as we have defined, indestructible in their pri- 
mary elements, however liable to accident or casualty in their 
municipal functionaries, having the corporate immortality of 
succession in their cardinal and vital being ; States, as we have 
seen, which existed before the Constitution of the United States 
was formed ; States, which framed the Constitution of the United 
States, had the power of war and peace, of making-treaties and 
repelling invasion, before the Union and the Congress existed. 
And we have seen that their existence and their power of war 
for self-preservation were not merged in the Union, or in the 
metropolitan, government which makes or executes the laws 
of the Union; the Constitution, on the contrary, created a 
" union of States," called the United States. The Union was 
iiiade by the States, and the States were ^ not unmade by the 
Union. There could be no union of States where no States 
were left to be united. They existed de jure before they made 
the Union, and in making it they expressly excluded the con- 
clusion, that thereby their own existence and powers were ex- 
cluded, or even merged, in the formation of the Union. The 
Constitution itself — every declaration, grant, limitation, prohibi- 
tion, or reservation of it — proves this. They each and all still 
retained every primary and secondary element of States, — their 
distinct boundaries, population, citizenship, conventional power 
and franchise, and their Constitutions, as also their municipal 
departments of government, legislative, executive, and judicial ; 
as well as all their powers " not delegated," and their powers 
"reserved," — especially their power of war in cases of actual 
invasion or of imminent danger " not admitting of delay." 

It was under these independent, ungranted, reserved, and 
constitutional powers of States that certain States, resolved on 
resistance, should have declared themselves actually invaded, 
and that they were in imminent danger not admitting of delay. 
They could not wait to obtain the consent of Congress, because 
their invasion was commenced by the Federal Executive, san'c- 



2C6 SEVEN DECADES OF TEE UNION. 

tioned by Congress. For this they should have engaged in war, 
the war of States with the Federal government and with the op- 
posing co-States in the Union. This they had the right to do, 
under the third paragraph of the thirteenth section of the first 
article of the Constitution which they had themselves prescribed. 
This would have been constitutional war, war between States 
and governments, and this, under our compositive system, made 
citizens of the States involved in the war inimici non hostes. 
They could not have been held individually responsible for the 
war, and the government. State or Federal, involved in the 
war could not have operated upon them in person, except to 
treat them as lawful belligerents. This would have been ample 
protection to them against all prosecutions for treason. It 
was war, but not war inter gentes, in which international law 
is the law of sovereignty. It would have been a civil, in- 
ternal, and intra-territorial war, and not subject to the absolute 
rule of the jus belli of the international law. In this only 
would the war have been peculiar, that in our Union of States 
— called by Wheaton a Bundesstaat, a bundle or baud of States, 
or a compositive system of States — the sovereignty was divided 
into external and internal. The external sovereignty was 
merged in the Union, and the supreme law of that sovereignty 
was the international law ; but the internal sovereignty was 
distributed between the Union and the States; its principles 
and component parts could be governed only by the law of in- 
ternal sovereignty — the Constitution of the United States. 

This civil, internal war, governed by the Constitution of the 
United States, the law of internal sovereignty, might have its 
external cases, such as those of blockade, inter gentes ; but the 
general law of the war would be the law of internal sover- 
eignty. 

This view has since been sustained by Vice-Chancellor Wood 
in the case of the United States vs. Prioleau, etc., 1 Jurist, etc. 
The States, as contradistinguished from the Confederacy, were 
not and could not be made the subjects of conquest by their 
own governments under their own law of internal sovereignty, 
the Constitution of the United States. The United States might 



TEE SEVENTH' DECADE. 267 

claim Confederate property, but could not claim State property, 
for the latter would be governed not by the international law, 
but by the Constitution of the United States, as the law of 
internal sovereignty. This war had, — 

First, its internal cases, involving rights of States and of citi- 
zens and their property, such as arrests and seizures on land, 
and proceedings operating both in personam and in rem, gov- 
erned by the Constitution of the United States ; and, second, 
its external cases, such as the prize cases, cases of " prize or no 
prize," necessarily cases inter gentes, involving neutrals abroad 
as well as belligerents at home. Tliese external cases were 
governed, of course, by the absolute rule of the jus belli. No 
other cases of the war were so governed. There were, third, a 
mixed class of cases, contraband in their nature, in which rights 
were sus2Dended only by the war. And internal war could not 
set aside or destroy the Constitution of the United States or its 
limitations. The internal cases could not be governed by the 
jus belli. 

The supreme law of these cases could only be the constitu- 
tional provisions — first, of common defense and self-protection, 
or the national power to preserve and defend its own authority, 
to keep the peace and restore order ; second, to execute the laws; 
and, third, to suppress force by arms. 

This civil war could be proclaimed and prosecuted by the 
Union internally only to maintain and support the Constitution 
of the United States. The Federal government was bound to 
assert and exert its authority for that purpose, and to execute 
such laws as were made in pursuance of the Constitution. 
Whatever was necessary and proper to be done by armed 
force to maintain the Union and to execute its constitutional 
laws might be done, but no more. No force for conquest, or 
for any purpose of mere warlike penalty, no power for subjuga- 
tion, could be exerted ; and the moment that the laws could be 
executed and the authority of the Federal government was 
established, the powers of war ceased, and civil process and 
jurisdiction resumed their reign and sway under the Constitu- 
tion of the United States. This had been too fullj discussed 



268 SEVEN DECADES OF THE UNION. 

and settled by Hamilton, Edmund Randolph, and Governor 
Mifflin, during the Wliiskj Insurrection in Pennsylvania, to 
be misunderstood. Every case, internal and intra-territorial, 
had to be governed by the supreme law of internal sovereignty, 
the Constitution of the United States, and the laws made in 
conformity therewith. The war-power, or military and militia 
power, of the Union was but auxiliary to the Constitution and 
laws of the Union. The only limited jus belli was the power 
to execute the laws. There could be no other constitutional or 
legitimate purpose of the war but to enforce the Constitution 
and laws of the Union. 

Thus the wisdom of our Federal Constitution was exhibited 
beyond that of any other federation of history. 

1st. It left a war-power in the States which shielded their 
citizens from the crime or penalties of treason. 

2d. It saved alike the States and their rights, and the rights 
of the persons and property of their citizens, in the conflict of 
States, from the arbitrary and extreme application of the abso- 
lute rule of the Jus belli of international law. 

And is it any argument against this clear exposition of our 
compositive system, to say that it leaves internal war by the 
States, either as to States or persons, without its penalties ? 

The reply is, that war of that kind has no penalties but those 
of war, — its battles, its death, its wounds, its captives, and cap- 
tures in war. This wise result was intended expressly by the 
framers of the Constitution — by the States themselves. They 
wisely foresaw that a minority of States might be wronged by a 
majority ; and the dread of war alone, which could win nothing 
by conquest and impose no ultimate penalties beyond the effect 
of arms, might deter a majority from violating the Constitution. 
If it did not, then the Constitution, propria vigore, would pro- 
tect the States and their people in fighting for their rights and 
for its guarantees. 

But these views, just and clearly sustained as they are by the 
laws of nations and by the Constitution of the Union, and ably 
expounded as they have been by Hamilton and Edmund Ran- 
dolph, early in our history, and afterwards by Wheaton in his 



THE SEVENTH DECADE. 269 

"Elements," and since the war by Judge Treat, in the Missouri 
cases, were all scouted. And so distinctly have they been set at 
naught since the war, in contrast with the precedents before, 
that whilst Congress claims that persons attached to the Con- 
federacy were traitors, it at the same time claims that by the 
rights of war between States it could dictate franchise and citi- 
zenship and constitutions of government to States having con- 
stitutions already defining citizenship and franchise, in defi- 
ance of the law of internal sovereignty, the Constitution of the 
United States. In the Rhode Island case, the Federal govern- 
ment deemed itself incompetent to interpose for the people, to 
afford them the opportunity of changing the king's charter into 
a Constitution, even under the constitutional clause making it 
imperative on the United States to guarantee to each State a 
republican form of government. So sacred was the principle 
then held, that neither the Federal Executive nor the Con- 
gress dared to interfere with a State Constitution, to modify, 
change, or destroy it, or even to assist the State's own people 
to change it for a better. But now, it has been seen that by 
act of Congress no less than eleven of the State Constitutions 
already existing, and not destroyed by the war or in the least 
impaired by it, have been set aside and annulled by statutory 
reconstruction, founded solely on the rights of war and the force 
of the jus belli. The conflict of States has been made, by Con- 
gress, internal rebellion, to hang citizens; and external and 
intergential war between States, in order to strip States by the 
JUS belli of the right of self-government. 

Some few of us foresaw this, but we were unheeded ; and 
when the conflict came, Mr. Tyler, after attending the Peace 
Convention and presiding over it in vain, for war was then in- 
evitable, unfortunately sided with secession as the mode and 
measure of redress, instead of '^fighting in the Union for the 
Union !" 

Alas ! few at that time could see the great truth, the most 
conservative and beautiful in our compositive system, that the 
conflict of States in our Union is neither insurrection nor rebel- 
lion, but is civil and internal war; and being internal and 



270 SEVEN DECADES OF THE UNION. 

civil, it is not governed by the law of external sovereignty, the 
jus gentium, with its absolute rule of the jus belli, but by the 
law of internal sovereignty, the Constitution of the United 
States; the domestic sovereignty of the States saving indi- 
vidual citizens from the halters of treason ; and the law of 
inteinal sovereignty, the Constitution of the United States, 
saving both States and their citizens from the penalties of the 
jus belli. 



CHAPTER XV. 

THE SEVENTH DECADE, PROM 1850 TO 18G3. 

Peace CDnvention— Virginia's Attitude— Rapid Rush of Events from the 4th of 
February to the 18th of March, 1861— The Part of Mr. Tyler— His Speech 
on opening the Peace Convention — Virginia's Delegates disagree among 
themselves — The Rule in the Case of Hylton vs. United States, as to Uni- 
formitij and Equality of Taxation throughout the United States, contended 
for by Mr. Tyler — Proclamation of the Federal Executive, and its Effect— 
The Seizure of Harper's Ferry — Secession declared by Virginia on the 17th 
• of April, 1861— What Virginia ought to have done — Mr. Tyler elected to the 
Confederate Congress — His Death — The Obituaries — His Will. 

The Peace Convention was called by Virginia. She had not 
as yet assumed the attitude of the Confederate States already 
seceded, or of the Federal government, or of neutrality. Her 
first movement was that of a peace-maker. There stood the 
colossal power of the Union, north, and there the States com- 
bined in secession, south; and here was Virginia, the mother 
of States and of statesmen, midway between the bristling 
bayonets of the belligerents, her territory and people easily 
accessible to invasion from either north or south, and she was 
physically compelled to look to her safety, and morally bound 
to take which ever side her judgment pronounced to be that 
of justice, law, and right. She was sure to be "actually in- 
vaded," and was already in " such imminent danger as not to 
admit of delay." Whatever may have been the position of 
other States, her prompt and decisive action was impelled by 
necessity and force. She was obliged to take up arms, but 
did not do so hastily, nor until after she had exhausted her 
efforts at conciliation. This call for a Peace Convention was 
mainly the work of Mr. Tyler. He, with Mr. Rives and Mr. 
Summers, was sent to the convention on the 4th of February, 
and on the 6th of February, 1861, it met at Washington and 

(271) 



272 SEVEN DECADES OF THE UNION. 

was organized. On the 4th of February, 1861, the Confederate 
Congress met at Montgomery, Alabama. The Conveution of 
Virginia met at Richmond on the 13th of February, 1861. The 
Confederate Constitution was adopted at Montgomery, and 
President Davis was inaugurated, on the 18th of February, 
1861. And the Peace Commissioners appointed by Virginia 
reported back to the governor and legislature on the 18th of 
March, 1861. Thus, in about forty days and forty nights, this 
deluge, like the flood which destroyed the world, gathered, and 
there was no Noah and no Ark to save us ! 

The part which Mr. Tyler took in the Peace Convention, and 
in respect to its results, was the most glorious of his life. It alone 
is a monument worthy of any name. He acted the part not only 
of a Father of his State, but of his whole country. An Ex-Presi- 
dent of the United States, he was made president of the con- 
vention called by his State to preserve the peace of the United 
States, and it was the hope of many at the time that the peace 
would be preserved. But the convention was too late. If it 
bad been called a year before, or if Virginia had drawn her sword 
for self-defense at once, instead of delaying or dallying for com- 
promises, war might have been averted. But the State had not 
drawn her sword, and the Peace Convention sat almost after 
the clash of arms had begun. From the National Intelligencer 
of Wednesday, February 6, 1861, we extract an account of 
some of the proceedings of the convention, and the speech of 
the President elect: 

"THE COMMISSIONERS' CONVENTION 

" The convention of delegates from the several States co- 
operating with Virginia in the work of national preservation 
was yesterday organized by the unanimous election of the Hon. 
John Tyler as its permanent President, and of the Hon. J. C. 
Wright, of Ohio, as Secretary. 

" In selecting by acclamation for their presiding officer the 
distinguished Ex-President of the United States, the members 
of this dignified body have conferred an honor which will 



THE SEVENTH DECADE. 273 

be as worthily worn as it was gracefully proffered, and the ap- 
propriateness of whose bestowal will be recognized by their 
countrymen throughout the whole land. It was fitting that one 
who had swayed the destinies of this great people as the 
Chief Magistrate of the Union should preside over deliberations 
which have for their object to preserve that Union which our 
fathers created. 

" And as affording gratifying evidence of the patriotic inspira- 
tions under which, as its President conceives, this convention 
of delegates from so many States is called to labor for the pres- 
ervation of the government, we take pleasure in giving to our 
readers the subjoined authentic report of the eloquent and ap- 
propriate address delivered by Mr. Tyler on taking the chair : 

" ' Gentlemen, — I fear you have committed a great error in 
appointing me to the honorable position you have assigned uie. 
A long separation from all deliberative bodies has rendered the 
rules of their proceedings unfamiliar to me ; while I should find 
in my own state of health, variable and fickle as it is, sufficient 
reason to decline the honor of being your presiding officer. But, 
in times like these, one has little option left him. Personal 
considerations should weigh but lightly in the balance. The 
country is in danger: it is enough, — one must take the place 
assigned him in the great work of reconciliation and adjust- 
ment. 

" ' The voice of Virginia has invited her co-States to meet 
her in council. In the initiation of this government that same 
voice was heard and complied with, and the results of seventy 
odd years have fully attested the wisdom of the decisions then 
adopted. Is the urgency of her call now less great than it was 
then ? Our godlike fathers created ; we have to preserve. 
They built up, through their wisdom and patriotism, monuments 
which have eternized their names. You have before you, gen- 
tlemen, a task equally grand, equally sublime, quite as full of 
glory and immortality. You have to snatch from ruin a great 
and glorious confederation, to preserve the government, and to 
renew and invigorate the Constitution. If you reach the height 

18 



2U SEVEN DECADES OF THE UNION. 

of this great occasion, your children's children will rise up and 
call you blessed. I confess myself to be ambitious of sharing in 
the glory of accomplishing this grand and magnificent result. To 
have our names enrolled in the Capitol, to be repeated by future 
generations with grateful applause, — this is an honor higher 
than the mountains, more enduring than monumental alabaster. 

" ' Yes, Yirginia's voice, as in the olden time, has been heard. 
Her sister States meet her at the council-board. Vermont is 
here, bringing with her the memories of the past, and reviving 
in the recollection of all her Ethan Allen, and his demand for 
the surrender of Ticonderoga in the name of the Great Jehovah 
and of the American Congress. New Hampshire is here, her 
fame illustrated by memorable annals, and still more lately as the 
birthplace of him who won for himself the name of Defender of 
the Constitution, and who wrote that letter to John Taylor 
which has been enshrined in the hearts of his countrymen. 

"'Massachusetts is not here.' (Some member said, 'She is 
coming.') 'I hope so,' said Mr. Tyler, ' and that she will bring 
her daughter, Maine. I did not believe it could well be that 
the voice which, in other times, was so familiar to her ears, had 
been addressed to her in vain. Connecticut is here; and she 
comes, I doubt not, in the spirit of Roger Sherman, whose 
name with our very children has become a household word, and 
who was in life the embodiment of that sound practical sense 
which befits the great lawgiver and constructor of governments. 
Rhode Island, the land of Roger Williams, is here, one of the two 
last States, in her jealousy of the public liberty, to give in her 
adhesion to the Constitution, and among the earliest to hasten 
to its rescue. The great Empire State of New York, repre- 
sented thus far by but one delegate, is expected daily in fuller 
force, to join in the great work of healing the discontents of the 
time and restoring fraternal feeling. 

'"New Jersey is also here, with the memories of the past cov- 
ering her all over. Trenton and Princeton live immortal in story, 
the plains of the last encrimsoned with the heart's blood of Yir- 
ginia's sons. A mong her delegation I rejoice to recognize a gallant 
son of a signer of the immortal Declaration which announced 



THE SEVENTH DECADE. 275 

to the world that thirteen Provinces had become thirteen inde- 
pendent and sovereign States. 

" 'And here, too, is Delaware, the land of the Bayards and 
the Rodneys, whose suil at Brandywine was moistened by the 
blood of Yirginia's youthful Monroe. 

'" Here is Maryland, whose massive columns moved into line 
with those of Virginia in the contest for glory, and whose State- 
house at Annapolis was the theater of the spectacle of a suc- 
cessful commander who, after liberating his country, gladly 
ungirthed his sword and laid it down upon the altar of that 
country. 

"'Then comes Pennsylvania, rich in Revolutionary lore, 
bringing with her the deathless names of Franklin and Morris, 
and, I trust, ready to renew from the belfry of Independence 
Hall the chimes of the old bell which announced freedom and 
independence in former days. 

" 'AH hail to North Carolina, with her Mecklenburg Declara- 
tion in her hand, standing erect on the ground of her own 
probity and firmness in the cause of the public liberty, and repre- 
sented in her attributes by her Macon, and in this assembly by 
her distinguished son, at no great distance from me. 

" ' Four daughters of Virginia also cluster around the council- 
board on the invitation of their ancient mother. The eldest, 
Kentucky, whose sons, under that intrepid warrior, Anthony 
Wayne, gave freedom of settlement to the territory of her sister 
Ohio. She extends her hand daily and hourly across " la belle 
riviere,'''' to grasp the hand of some one of kindred blood of the 
noble States of Indiana and Illinois and Ohio, who have grown 
up into powerful States already, grand, potent, and almost im- 
perial. 

" ' Tennessee is not here, but is coming, — prevented from being 
here only by the floods which have swollen her rivers. When 
she arrives, she will wear the badges on her warrior crest of 
victories won, in company with the Great West, on many an 
ensanguined plain, and standards torn from the hands of the 
conquerors at Waterloo. 

" ' Missouri and Iowa, and Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minne- 



276 SEVEN DECADES OF TEE UNION. 

sota, still linger behind ; but it may be hoped that their hearts 
are with us in the great work we have to do. 

" ' Gentlemen, the eyes of the whole country are turned to this 
assembly in expectation and hope. I trust that you may prove 
yourselves worthy of the great occasion. Our ancestors proba- 
bly committed a blunder in not having fixed upon any fifth 
decade for a call of a general convention to amend and reform the 
Constitution. On the contrary, they have made the difficulties 
next to insurmountable to accomplish amendments to an instru- 
ment which was perfect for five millions of people, but not 
wholly so as to thirty millions. Your patriotism will surmount 
the difficulties, however great, if you will but accomplish but 
one triumph in advance, and that is, a triumph over party. 
And what is party, when compared to the task of rescuing our 
country from danger ? Do that, and one long, loud shout of 
joy and gladness will resound throughout the land !' 

" The choice made by the convention in the selection of its 
secretary will be recognized, by all who know Mr. Wright, as 
an appointment eminently fit to be made ; and, this patriotic 
council having thus auspiciously initiated its deliberations, we 
may be permitted to hope that its results will not disappoint 
the just expectations of the American people." 

The convention failed. The Virginia delegates did not them- 
selves agree as to the conditions of peace. Mr. Tyler differed 
widely from his colleagues. Rives and Summers. Mr. Summers 
contended for extreme concessions, and he and Mr. Rives both 
blundered egregiously in thinking that the slave States would 
gain much by accepting a proposition that the Territories should 
not tax slaves in their limits otherwise than as they should or 
might tax all other persons. Mr. Tyler showed them that already, 
by the rules of uniformity of taxation in respect of duties, excises, 
and imposts, and by the rule of equality as to direct taxes, consist- 
ing only of tax on land and the poll tax, the Constitution itself 
protected the people of all the States and Territories against 
Federal taxes which were either wanting in uniformity or in 
equality, as shown by one of the earliest cases decided by the 



THE SEVENTH DECADE. 27t 

Supreme Court of the United States, the case of Ilylton vs. the 
United States. And to take sucli a condition as something new 
for a compromise was to concede that it was not already pro- 
vided for and guaranteed. In the debate with Mr. Summers 
before the Virginia State Convention, in March, 1861, on their 
different reports, Mr. Rives being present as a spectator, Mr. 
Tyler was very able, though in feeble health. That was, 
perhaps, the last long effort of his mind on any important 
and exciting topic, and, though feeble in body, he sustained 
himself admirably. He was no longer hopeful of peace, and 
the Federal Executive's proclamation against rebellion and 
insurrection compelled him to give his voice for secession at 
once. 

The Convention of Virginia had appointed a committee of 
twenty-one members to deliberate upon the proper action of the 
convention. Sixteen out of the twenty-one of this committee 
had at first been opposed to secession, were warmly for the 
Union, and but five were for resistance by arms in self-defense. 
The Union majority on this committee was for delay, for com- 
promise, for anything rather than war. They held back their 
report to the very last, and some of them held conferences with 
Secretary Seward himself at Washington for some mode of 
conciliation. "We happened to be one of the minority of five, 
though not favoring secession, but preferring to fight in the 
Union ; and when the committee was compelled to report it was 
very much divided. It split into thi-ee divisions : the majority 
report eschewed disunion and war; a minority report favored 
remaining in the Union, but advised armed resistance within its 
pale, in case of invasion and war, in self-defense, and the forming 
of a provisional league with the revolutionary States without 
forming a new and separate government from that of the United 
States; and then a third division of the committee voted against 
both the majority and minority reports, and were for immediate 
secession and junction with the Confederate States government at 
Montgomery. Just as these reports were made, the proclamation 
of the President of the United States was hurled like a bolt of 
war into our midst: instantly all differences ceased, and the 



278 SEVEN DECADES OF THE UNION. 

resolution of secession was adopted at once, with but few dis- 
sentients, who retired from the body. 

The eflfect of the proclamation was to cause this not well- 
considered action. But for it, it is thought that a better course 
than that of secession would have been taken. But, besides 
the Executive proclamation, there was another cause of rather 
too hasty action. During the early and latter part of the ses- 
sion of the convention the secessionists were accused of getting 
up sensational reports and rumors. It was known that the 
government at Washington had ordered and commenced the 
preparation of Fortress Monroe, at Old Point Comfort, for the 
purpose of invasion, and there were daily rumors of other 
preparations of the President and Congress for aggression. 
These rumors were sneered at and slighted by those opposed to 
secession, as Democratic telegrams, until, at last, the announce- 
ment was made to the convention that a portion of the citizens 
of the Valley of Virginia were marching in force upon Harper's 
Ferry to capture the arsenal and arms of the United States at 
that place. The secret history of that important event has 
never yet been divulged, and may never be until this genera- 
tion, at least, shall be laid in the dust, but the materials are 
well preserved. The event was electric in its effect of fusing 
the Virginia Convention into one mass of secession. The procla- 
mation at Washington and this event at Harper's Ferry found 
their denouement in the Declaration of Secession by Virginia 
on the nth March, 1861. Then was the time for a mediatorial 
armed neutrality on the part of this State, to say to the North, 
"Hold back!" and to the South, "Give up" their slaves in 
order that their masters may remain free ! — then was the time, 
if Congress would proceed to force submission, to have formed a 
provisional government merely, with an alliance or compact of 
States, for defense within the pale of the Constitution and the 
Union. But the rush of Virginia to secession from the Union, 
and to a junction with the revolutionary States into a separate 
Confederacy, with a President and Congress, under a perma- 
nent, fixed form of government, accelerated by the proclamation 
and by the seizure of Harper's Ferry, had begun, and there was 



THE SEVENTH DECADE. 279 

no stopping it short of the extreme to which it went, of dis- 
union and of war. The Harper's Ferry seizure and the affair 
of the Gosport Navy- Yard were nearly cotemporaneous, and 
then the war commenced in deadly earnest. 

After the Declaration of Secession by the convention, Mr, 
Tyler went home to his constituents, in the Charles City dis- 
trict, and declared himself a candidate for a seat in the House 
of Representatives of the Confederate Congress, and was elected 
by a large majority over two formidable opponents. He came 
to his work with a zeal, life, and energy hardly to be expected 
at his period of life, being then seventy-one years of age. In 
1861 he had overreached his threescore years and ten; yet his 
intellect was as bright as it had ever beamed on deliberative 
assemblies. He served actively and with the admiration of 
his compeers, a Nestor in their counsels, beloved and heeded 
by all, until he was stricken down in his harness of civil ser- 
vice, hopeful and hard-working to the last, — a lover of the 
Union until he found it was to be the instrument of destruction 
to State Rights and civil liberty, and then its enemy only in 
the sense of defense against the aggression in its name upon 
those for whom it was intended to be a shield and buckler. 

We have purposely, and for good reasons, omitted at this op- 
portunity to publish the history of the seizure of Harper's Ferry 
and of the powder-magazine at Norfolk ; but there is one inci- 
dent which occurred early in 1861 which we may relate without 
danger to any person, and the truth of which is due to a dead 
patriot, whose name we have already tried to do justice to, and 
due to the art of naval war, which he eminently contributed to 
promote. James Barron was not only the inventor of the 
metallic blocks and the ship ventilator of our navy, and the 
best instructor upon the time and mode of cutting and preserv- 
ing ship timber, but his genius caused the construction of the 
iron-clad steamer, the Virginia, for the Confederate defense. 
He was dead long before the Confederate war, and his idea of 
the marine catapuUa lived after him. 

For the several years between 1833 and 1844, when we 
served on the Committee of Naval Affairs of the House of 



280 SEVEN DECADES OF THE UNION 

Representatives in Congress, James Barron was continuously 
urging upon that committee his invention of an impregnable 
steam propeller armed with a pyramidal beak on the water-line. 
He could never obtain an appropriation for the experiment. It 
was deemed visionary. He offered \o place his model under 
the guns of Fortress Monroe, and to perish with it if it could 
be penetrated and sunk. He had nicely tried the maximum 
penetration of coast and ship guns of all calibers, and then cal- 
culated the thickness gained by an inclined plane, with a view 
not only to impenetrability, but to the angle of ricocheting shot. 
Four feet thickness, perpendicular, for example, when inclined, 
became six or eight or ten feet, according to the angle of in- 
clination towards the horizontal. The form of the model, then, 
from stem to stern, and from side to side, above water, would be 
a terrapin-back at a very acute angle of incidence to a shot fired 
from a ship's gun deck; so acute that the shot would, especially 
by solid oak, be deflected upwards, and could never perforate 
the sides or upper works. He proposed to carry one heavy 
stern and one bow gun, and four starboard and four port guns, 
all in iron casemate port-holes. But his most offensive armor 
was the pyramidal beak. The ship, braced and samsoned 
abow by all possible inner appliances, was given a cut- water 
of the greatest strength, sheathed with iron, and the beak was 
made solid to it, and bearing not on the ribs of the bow, but 
impinging altogether upon the keelson, continuous as possible 
with it. The upper side of the beak was made to commence 
on the water-line, and descended in several steps, so that the 
end would be under water just deep enough to strike upon the 
counter of the enemy's ship, and the lower side of the beak 
was nearly horizontal. The object of the pyramid was strength, 
to impinge under the water-line, and, above all, when the beak 
penetrated, to prevent the enemy's ship from hanging on it and 
carrying the bow of the propeller down with her in sinking. 
He calculated exactly the momentum of his model at any given 
rate of speed, showing that no kind of ship then known could 
bear the concussion of his beak at even three miles an hour rate 
of speed. He was a master-mechanic and draughtsman, and 



THE SEVENTH DECADE. 281 

presented his memorial and model in the most demonstrated 
formula. Being the only one on the committee, we believe, who 
gave him an ear of attention, he presented us with his model, 
and we had it at our residence when secession was declared by 
Virginia. 

We signed the ordinance of secession, and returned to the 
county of Princess Anne, ill, before the convention adjourned, 
and witnessed the vandal and cowardly destruction of the navy- 
yard at Gosport. The Pennsylvania ship of the line had fired 
the morning, noon, and evening guns in the harbor for years, 
and her broadside was pointed upon the town, shotted ; and a 
merciful Providence alone prevented her balls from riddling 
that portion of Norfolk where the laboring and poor people 
chiefly resided. The fire from the sail-lofts fortunately fell 
upon the middle of her decks and burnt them through, so as to 
lower the breeches and elevate the muzzles of the guns before 
they became so hot as to explode, and thus the broadside of 
shot passed over the town, doing no damage. The guns boomed 
with a muffled sound, as if smothered partially by the water in 
the sinking ship. It was ominous ; it was the knell of either 
the Union or of liberty, and can never be forgotten by those 
who heard it with enough of divine grace to hope to forgive 
the craven incendiaries who lighted the torches of the glaring 
conflagration ! The burning of the Gosport Navy-Yard and 
its abandonment was the most dastard and disgraceful devasta- 
tion of the war. They were frightened by a ruse of Mahone, 
rattling his empty cars up and down the railroad and alarming 
the cowards with the apprehension of the rapid movement of 
considerable bodies of troops. They were not self-possessed 
enough to distinguish the sound of empty cars from that of 
loaded cars. But the result of their fears caused every thought 
and sense, as well as every feeling, of the Confederates to be 
aroused. Our wits went to work at once, and the model of 
Barron came to our mind. We immediately, by letter, described 
it to General Lee, and the tender was made of six hundred 
acres of pine and oak, in four miles, by water, of the Gosport 
Navy- Yard, with a steam saw-mill already cutting timber at 



282 SEVEN DECADES OF THE UNION. 

the spot. He was informed that Barron especially recom- 
mended that the draft of the steamer should not exceed ten or 
twelve feet of water. General Lee was then in State com- 
mand, and had State means only ; but, through him, doubtless, 
the Merrimack was raised and converted into the Virginia iron- 
clad. Commodore Barron's ideas were not carried out in her 
construction. The naval architect did not calculate accurately 
the weight of masts, spars, rigging, and upper works taken off, 
compared with the weight of iron sheathing put on, and the 
consequence was that when launched the hulk stood out of 
water several feet higher than the sheathing reached down the 
sides. This was remedied by ballast, which made the vessel 
draw eighteen feet of water, in order to dip the sheathing below 
the water-line. Then, too, the beak, instead of being pyramidal 
or inclining on the upper surface, was made horizontal on the 
upper and inclined upwards on the lower side. This caused it 
to break in sinking the Congress and Cumberland frigates. We 
have a cane made of its live-oak wood, and were told it was 
perhaps as large a solid piece of it as was left unfrasseled by 
the concussions. We witnessed the fight with the Monitor 
and Merrimack, and the great fault of the Yirginia was that 
she drew too much water and was an unwieldy " icave-wal- 
lower.''^ But it was a grave error ever to have blown her up. 
There was no necessity for it, and the pilots agreed in that 
opinion. Enough ballast could have been thrown out to gain 
five or six feet in her draft, and she might have been taken to 
the mouth of the Chickahominy, and would have prevented all 
approach from below, and all crossing of the James at Harri- 
son's Landing. 



CHAPTER XYI. 

DECADE BEGINNING IN 1861 AND ENDING JANUARY 18 1863 

Death of Mr. Tyler — Proceedings of the Legislature of Virginia — Pri *eedings 
of the Confederate Congress — The Citizens of Richmond did him Homage 
and Sepulture at Hollywood Cemetery, where his Remains lie; an J Honor 
•was done his Memory even in Baltimore at that Hazardous Time — Item in 
his Will touching his Burial. 

At the time of his demise Mr. Tyler was a member of the 
provisional, and member elect of the permanent, Confederate 
Congress. 

On the 18th day of January, a.d. 1862, at the city of Rich- 
mond, after a short illness, in the full possession of his mental 
faculties, conscious that death was near, calm and collected, he 
bade this world farewell, and departed this life with dignity and 
without fear, perfectly composed, a firm believer in the atone- 
ment of the Son of God, and in the efficacy of his blood to wash 
away every stain of mortal sin. 

He was by faith and by heirship a member of the Episcopal 
Church of Christ, and never doubted Divine Revelation. He 
was an honest, affectionate, benevolent, loving man, who had 
fought the battles of this life bravely and truly, doing his 
whole great duty without fear, though not without much unjust 
reproach ; with a genial soul, glowing with good will to man, 
and reverence to God, and so righteous that his worst enemy 
on earth might well pray, " Oh that my latter end be like his !" 

He had forgiven all his foes long before he died, and did them 
more than justice whenever he spoke of their despiteful usage 
to him. In the last scenes of our intercourse with him in the 
convention which declared secession, he passed in that body a 
eulogy on Henry Clay, so undeserved from him upon one who 

(283) 



284 SEVEN DECADES OF THE UNION. 

had, in the Senate of the United States, so fiercely denounced 
him, that we could not refrain from reproaching him privately 
for uttering even what was truthful in the encomium. But for 
this charity and this forgiving temper and disposition he was 
richly and rarely rewarded. No man in all history ever so out- 
lived calumny and all enmity of others as he did. When he left 
his fellow-men he left nothing in their hearts and memories but 
admiration and veneration of his character, and the remem- 
brance of the good deeds he had done. And his good deeds 
were not "interred with his bones." They are now living in 
the policy his Presidency pursued. 

Immediately on the day of his death, the General Assembly 
of the State of Virginia took obituary action. 

SENATE. 
"DEATH OF PKESIDENT TYLEE. 

" The President laid before the Senate the following communi- 
cation from the Executive : 

" Executive Department, January 18, 1862. 

"Gentlemen of the Senate and House of Delegates, — 
John Tyler departed this life at his lodgings, in this city, after 
a brief illness, at twelve o'clock last night. Mr. Tyler has 
served the people of Yirginia with ability and distinction, in 
various public positions, for almost half a century. He has served 
in the General Assembly, on the Executive Council, in the House 
of Representatives of the United States, as Governor of the 
State, Senator in Congress, Vice-President and President of the 
United States, member of the State Convention of 1829-30 
and the Convention of 1861, and at the time of his death was 
a member of the Provisional Congress, and a member elect of 
the Permanent Congress, of the Confederate States. His ser- 
vices have been important and valuable ; and in all of these posi- 
tions he has fully met the public expectations. The loss of such 
a man, at a time when his talents and experience are so greatly 
needed in the public councils, is a calamity greatly to be de- 



THE SEVENTH DECADE. 285 

plored. Well may the people of Virginia and the Southern 
Confederacy mourn for the loss of one not less distinguished 
for his manly virtues than his brilliant career as a statesman. , 

" Respectfully, 

" John Letcher. 

" On motion of Mr. Dickinson, of Prince Edward, the commu- 
nication was laid on the table and ordered to be printed. 

"A message was received from the House of Delegates, com- 
municating resolutions commemorating the death of Hon. John 
Tyler. The preamble and resolutions were read by the clerk 
of the Senate, as follows : 

" The mournful intelligence of the decease of John Tyler, after 
a brief illness, has cast a gloom over this General Assembly. 
The sad news will spread throughout his native State with 
painful effect. It will be heard throughout the Southern Con- 
federacy with deep and abiding sorrow. He has filled a large 
space in the history of his country. Heaven has blessed him 
with length of days, and his country with all her honors. He 
has secured, we believe, a blissful immortality. 

" For the page of history his fame is destined to occupy, it is 
proper briefly to recount the many offices he has filled. From 
3'outhful manhood to green old age, he has served his country 
faithfully, as a member of the House of Delegates, where his 
ripening intellect displayed the promise of usefulness, and 
attracted attention ; as a member of the Executive Council, 
where his wholesome advice lent wisdom to authority ; as the 
Governor of this Commonwealth, where his administrative 
powers gave efficacy to law, and his execution of the will of 
the people, expressed by their representatives, was rendered 
pleasant by kindness and courtesy ; as a member of the first 
convention called to amend the State Constitution, in which 
body his ripened experience gave his counsel the force of wis- 
dom and prudence ; as a member of the House of Representa- 
tives of the United States, standing firm amid the rage of party 
spirit and remaining true to principle and to right ; as a Senator 
representing this State in the Senate of the United States, in 



286 SEVEN DECADES OF THE UNION. 

which he shone conspicuous for his strict adherence to constitu- 
tional obligation and for his manly defense of ihe rights of the 
States and the honor of the country ; as Vice-President of the 
United States, presiding over the deliberations of the Senate 
with dignity and impartiality, preserving the decorum of a body 
that then was a model for legislative assemblies; as President 
of the United States, when the national honor and reputation 
were acknowledged unimpeached and unimpaired in every land, 
and the powers of the earth looked up to the new government 
as an exemplar of morals and of power worthy of respect and 
imitation. He thus, step by step, ascended to the eminence 
from which he surveyed his country, peaceful and glorious, and 
calmly retired in dignity to a private station, happy in the con- 
templation of a bright career, happy in a refined and prosperous 
home, happy in the circle of family and friends. 

" His State called him again into her service. She was to be 
assembled in convention to resist oppression, and to withstand 
a galling tyranny against which her best men chafed. His ser- 
vices were invoked to aid in maintaining the high position she 
had heretofore occupied. He came from his retirement. He ad- 
vised separation in peace, or war to vindicate her honor. He 
was again selected a commissioner to tender to the govern- 
ment at Washington the ter^ns upon which Virginia would 
remain united with her former sisters. He was honored with 
the presidency of that Peace Conference. His manly appeals 
for justice were uttered and unheeded. He returned, and 
recommended separation and independence. His advice was 
taken. It became necessary to form and establish another 
government for the new Confederacy. He was appointed by 
the Sovereign Convention of Virginia a member of the Provis- 
ional Congress. While occupying a conspicuous place in the 
eyes of the Confederacy, and the new government was as- 
suming its permanent basis, he was elected by the people 
a member to the first House of Representatives of the Con- 
federate States, with a fair promise still of usefulness, to stamp 
his wisdom upon the enduring monuments of a new national 
existence. 



THE SEVENTn DECADE. 287 

"But it pleased the Almighty to check his career, and take 
him to Himself. 

" Such is the brief outline of the career of John Tyler. la 
private he was the perfect gentleman, the warm-hearted, affec- 
tionate, social, and delightful companion ; it may be said of him, 
his kind hand ministered to the wants of the distressed. 

"Besolved, By the General Assembly, as a testimonial of a 
nation's sorrow for the death of a great and good man, that a 
joint committee of the Senate and House of Delegates be ap- 
pointed to confer with a committee of the Congress of the Con- 
federate States, to make arrangements for his funeral and burial. 
" Besolved, That, with the consent of his family, his remains 
be deposited in Hollywood Cemetery, in the city of Richmond, 
near the remains of James Monroe, and that the Governor of 
this State be authorized to cause a suitable monument to be 
erected to his memory. 

" Besolved, That these resolutions be forthwith communicated 
by the Speaker of the House of Delegates to the Congress of the 
Confederate States, with a request that they concur therein. 

" Mr. Branch, of Williamsburg, said that as he had the honor 
to represent a part of the district in which the deceased had 
lived during a long life of public service, he moved the unani- 
mous adoption of the preamble and resolutions which had come 
from the House. 

"Mr, Robertson, of the city of Richmond. — ' I cannot permit 
the occasion to pass without saying a few words to express my 
sense of the merits and virtues of a deceased friend. On my 
way to the Capitol this morning, I learned that John Tyler, 
late President of the United States, had paid that debt which, 
sooner or later, must be exacted of us all. It was my good 
fortune to be acquainted with him, I may say intimately, from 
early life, dating from my college days. I have known him in 
all the walks and through all the relations of life. It were need- 
less for me to recount the attributes of his character, his integ- 
rity, his high attainments, his devotion to his country. I am 
not accustomed to the language of eulogy. Fortunately for me, 
and fortunately for my friend, he needs none. The high places 



288 SEVEN DECADES OF THE UNION. 

of trust which he has received through his whole life, commend 
him to the hearts of all. 

" ' Sir, if there was any one trait that marked his character 
more than another, it was his firm devotion to those principles 
which carried the American people through the war of the 
Revolution, and to the same principles which, I hope, will before 
long carry us through the struggle in which we are engaged. 
I need not speak more fully of the many high offices which he 
has filled. They are too well known to be repeated. His acts 
and his character are identified with the history of our State 
and country, and are known in Europe. I am confident that no 
dissenting voice will be heard upon the passage of these resolu- 
tions. It is in consequence of my representing this district that 
I felt it incumbent on me to make these few remarks.' 

"Mr. Dickinson, of Prince Edward, had not intended to have 
uttered one word on this mournful occasion. He had not even 
heard of the illness of Mr. Tyler till he was startled, (while on 
his way to this chamber) with the sad announcement which 
filled him with sorrow and surprise. 'Deeply sympathizing in 
the just tribute to his memory, which these resolutions so appro- 
priately propose, I should be untrue to the promptings of my 
own heart, and unfaithful in reflecting the high appreciation in 
which he was held, by those whom I represent on this floor, if 
I failed to unite in expressing my own grief and theirs. Unlike 
the venerable senators who have preceded me, I am too young 
to have been admitted to the relations of personal intimacy with 
the distinguished and lamented dead, which they enjoyed. And 
yet from my boyhood it was my privilege to know and regard 
him as a friend and political guide. As a public man, I have 
been accustomed to look to the principles which governed his 
career with more than ordinary respect. 

" 'I am untaught, sir, in the language of eulogy ; my heart is 
too full to attempt it on this sad occasion. Nor is it necessary 
that I should. Our illustrious friend, by a long life of useful- 
ness in the public service, extending through a period of half a 
century, in every dignified position, from a seat in this Assem- 
bly to the Presidential chair, wrote his own eulogy in his 



THE SEVENTH DECADE, 289 

country's history. By his talents and attainments, his nnyield- 
ing integrity and elevated devotion to principles, his lofty and 
ardent patriotism, happily blended with those high qualities of 
public and personal purity, which dignified and adorned his 
character, he has erected in the hearts of a grateful people a 
monument which will long be cherished as a national treasure. 

" ' Identified with the history of the country through a long 
and eventful life, mingling as he had done in the stirring scenes 
of party strife, it was his happiness to outjive the animosities 
and heart-burnings which they engendered, and to be univer- 
sally regarded in the calm eve of his life as a patriot statesman. 
Thus favored, he has gone to his last account. A patriot and a 
statesman has fallen, and a nation mourns his loss. He fell 
where he ever stood, foremost in the ranks, battling for the best 
interests of the country which he loved with the affection of a 
pious son. These tidings will thrill with painful interest 
throughout this young republic, in whose service he has fallen 
at the post of duty. 

" ' But, sir, there is another, a narrower and a holier circle, 
within which this afflictive stroke will fall with peculiar heavi- 
ness — where those gentle and endearing traits of private virtue 
which so eminently adorned his character, shone with unusual 
luster. I would not intrude too soon upon the sanctity of 
domestic grief to mingle ray tears with theirs ; yet I cannot fail 
to remember that their grief, though more poignant than ours, 
is yet common to us all. Like them, we too will cherish his 
memory with all that warm affection which his life inspired. 

" ' I trust, and feel assured, that these resolutions will com- 
mand the unanimous assent of the Senate.' 

" Mr. Collier, of Petersburg, and Mr. Isbell, of Jefferson, also 
spoke. We regret that we have not space to add to the above 
even the substance of their feeling and eloquent remarks upon 
the character and services of the subject of the resolutions. It 
was evident that, in the tributes that were thus paid, it was the 
aim of the several speakers to rest the merits of the distinguished 
statesman upon the single and appropriate language of justice 
and truth. 

19 



290 SEVEN DECADES OF THE UNION: 

" The committee nominated on the part of the Senate to meet 
the committee on the part of the House, to carry out the object 
designated in the resolutions, consisted of Messrs. Branch, 
Robertson, Collier, Isbell, Newman, Johnson, and Wiley. 

" After the announcement of the committee as above, the 
Senate adjourned. 

HOUSE OF DELEGATES. 

" The House met at 12 o'clock, Mr. Collier in the Chair. 
Prayer by Rev. Dr. Moore. 

" The Speaker pro tern, presented to the House the follow- 
ing communication from the Governor : 

" Executive Department, January 18, 1862. 

" Gentlemen op the Senate and House of Delegates, — 
John Tyler departed this life at his lodgings, in this city, 
after a brief illness, at twelve o'clock last night. Mr. Tyler 
has served the people of Virginia with ability and distinction, in 
various public positions, for almost half a century. He has served 
in the General Assembly, on the Executive Council, in the House 
of Representatives of the United States, as Governor of the 
State, Senator in Congress, Vice-President and President of the 
United States, member of the State Convention of 1829-30 
and the Conventiod of 1861, and at the time of his death was a 
member of the Provisional Congress, and a member elect to the 
Permanent Congress, of the Confederate States. His services 
have been important and valuable; and in all of these positions 
he has fully met the public expectations. The loss of such a 
man, at a time when his talents and experience are so greatly 
needed in the public councils, is a calamity greatly to be de- 
plored. Well may the people of Virginia and the Southern 
Confederacy mourn for the loss of one not less distinguished for 
his manly virtues than his brilliant career as a statesman. 

" Respectfully, 

" John Letcher. 



THE SEVENTH DECADE. 291 

" Mr. Barbour arose, and said tliat tlie mournful fact communi- 
cated in that message marked one of the events in our national 
history. It would be unjust for him to enter into a eulogy 
upon the deceased statesman. That man was the last great 
link that connected the generation that made the first immortal 
revolution with the generation that made the present one. 
Through all that lapse of time John Tyler stood high in the 
honor and confidence of the people of Virginia. His name has 
become historic. 

" In conclusion, Mr. Barbour presented a series of joint resolu- 
tions in reference to Mr. Tyler's death, which were unanimously 
adopted. (The resolutions will be found in our Senate report.) 

" Mr. Newton, of Westmoreland, said that, unprepared as we 
all are by this event, he still felt that he must offer his tribute 
to a dear friend and an illustrious statesman. John Tyler was 
no ordinary man. He was truly a great and illustrious one. 
It might be said of him, as was said of another illustrious man, 
' He has sounded all the depths and shoals of honor.' There 
was no office that he had not filled with honor. Though he 
(Mr. Newton) had been sometimes alienated from him in the 
turmoil of political life, he had ever been ready to testify to his 
worth and purity of purpose. Mr. Newton adverted to memo- 
ries which such an occasion as this, in this hall, brought flock- 
ing to his mind. When he first entered here, John Tyler was 
Governor of the Commonwealth. He looked around in vain for 
those who then filled these seats. They were all gone. He 
looked towards the seat where the Chatham of Virginia was 
wont to sit muffled in his flannels, or leaning on his crutch 
(William B. Giles), and he could imagine he almost saw him 
now, hurling his thunders at wrong and oppression. 

" Mr. Newton called over other names of departed Virginians 
who distinguished this room when he first came here. Their 
absence brought up mournful feelings, and served to teach us 
the shortness of life. 

" Mr. Robertson, of Richmond, said that he was impelled by 
feelings he could not repress, and would not repress if he could, 
to offer a few words. But he felt deeply pained to know that, 



292 SEVEN DECADES OF THE UNION. 

SO suddenly called on, the tribute must be imperfect and utterly 
inadequate to the occasion. It was but a few minutes only 
since information had reached him of the death of Mr. Tyler, 
and in that brief period it was impossible for the mind even to 
have reviewed the many and illustrious series of his services, 
or to have catalogued the multitude of his virtues. He would 
not attempt the hopeless task. But he might be permitted to 
signalize the rare benignity of his nature, that embraced all in 
the folds of his love, and in time attracted the love of all with 
whom he came in contact ; for it mattered not how far men dif- 
fered from him in opinion, or blamed or approved his cour-se, 
still there was that in him which attracted all who approached 
him. He thought he had never known a man so universally 
attractive and winning as John Tyler, nor one whose heart was 
more open to every genial and kindly affection. 

" As a statesman, his career had been eminently distinguished. 
In that highest part of it, as President of the United States, he 
administered our affairs with great ability. In that part of it, in 
particular, which concerned our foreign relations, and to which 
other nations mainly look for an estimate of a public man, his 
administration was a brilliant success. It may compare for 
wisdom, energy, and an enlightened perception of our foreign 
policy, with any, even the most brilliant, of the administrations 
that preceded it. I rejoiced, therefore, that he still lived to shed 
in the eyes of the world that just weight and dignity to the 
cause of the South, reflected on them by his participation in 
our councils. I had even looked to his carrying into a yet 
higher sphere than that to which he had already been called, the 
advantages of that trail of glory as a statesman which, seen afar 
off by the nations, could not but reflect a certain luster on the 
new government now undergoing those heavy trials which every 
people must meet in asserting their independence. But the hope 
and all of that future connected with Mr. Tyler's name, on earth, 
is past. Mr. R. would not pursue his remarks further. He was 
too sensible how far they fell short of what his wishes or the 
merits of the subject demanded. 

" Mr. Anderson, of Botetourt, added his tribute to the exalted 



THE SEVEiYTR DECADE. 293 

worth of the great man who had just left us. It had been his 
pleasure to have had a long acquaintance with John Tyler. He 
had entered public life when Mr. Tyler was a prominent states- 
man before the country. When he was but a youth, he had 
first formed an intimacy with him ; and neve:- liad an acquaint- 
anceship been more delightful. He had never met a man of 
more winning manners. He united all the highest social quali- 
ties. No statesman had been called to higher stations. No 
one had spent so much of his life in the service of his country. 
His career is an example for our young men. Notwithstanding 
the infirmities of age, he put on his armor and stood forth iu 
the front ranks of the defenders battling for their country's 
rights. He did not doubt that the news of his death would 
sink deep in the hearts of the people throughout the length and 
breadth of the Confederacy. He hoped and believed that he 
was now in a more blissful world. 

" Mr. Laidley could not let the occasion pass without respond- 
ing for the younger members of the House. On their part he 
would say that John Tyler's life would serve them as an ex- 
ample worthy of emulation, and that the story of his virtues 
should be handed down to their children's children. 

"Mr. Jones, of Gloucester, said that he came from the same 
section that gave John Tyler to Virginia. He had known him 
in childhood ; indeed, he might say he had been raised with his 
children, and in his intercourse with him he almost looked up to 
him as a father. In his college days he had received the same 
fatherly encouragement and assistance. He felt, therefore, that 
he knew him well enough to say that in every community 
in which he lived he was without an enemy. All loved him 
as a friend. In his social relations he was no less esteemed. 
He would not speak of his career as a statesman. As time 
advances, his name shall grow brighter, until time shall be no 
more. 

" The Speaker appointed the following committee under the 
resolutions : 

" Messrs. Barbour, Robertson of Richmond, Hunter, Blue, 
Jones of Grloucester, Mallory, Sanders, Newton, Anderson of 



294 SEVEN DECADES OF THE UNION. 

Botetourt, Sheffey, McCamaut, Rives, and Grattan. He also 
appointed Mr. Barboui' to report the resolutions to the Senate. 
" The House then adjourned." 

On the Monday following, the 20th of the month, the Con- 
federate Congress took action. 

^''THE LATE EX-PEESIDENT TYLEE. 

"PROCEEDINGS IN CONGRESS. 

"Xt the close of the very appropriate tribute by Mr. Macfar- 
land, published in the Whig of yesterday, Mr. Hunter, of Vir- 
ginia, rose, and said: 

' — " ''1 rise to offer my tribute of respect to the memory of the 
deceased. 

" 'As has been well said, the name of John Tyler, now passed 
into the possession of history, has an order of its own in that 
great sanctuary. Its sojourn is over. Nothing can now dim 
its luster as it passes down the tide of time. 

" * It is said, sir, there is something in the story of the hum- 
blest life, which, if rightly told, will afford food for profitable 
study. With how much of interest, then, do we turn to the 
contemplation of the lives of those who have been martyrs of 
their kind, who have left examples for the imitation of posterity; 
of those whose voices have been the most persuasive and con- 
vincing in council, and whose shout, like that of the king, has 
been most potent in marshaling the hosts 1 

"* Among the public men of our day, John Tyler has been 
one of the most marked and distinguished. With him disap- 
pears the last, save one who now sits in this chamber, of those 
great men who adorned the Senate of the United States when 
I first entered upon public life with him. We shall bury the 
last of the line, the illustrious line of Southern Presidents 
whose names have connected us with the highest honors of the 
Union from which we have just parted. Does not this deepen 
the sense of our separation as we see one by one pass away, 



THE SEVENTH DECADE. 205 

not only the material links, but the ties of personal association 
which bound us to those whom we have lately left? 

" ' No man, Mr. President, has more fully completed the circle 
of honors which were opened to the aspirations of our public 
men than John Tyler. Scarcely had he attained his majority 
when he was sent to the House of Delegates in Virginia. After 
a service of a few years there, he was successively elected a 
member of the Executive Council, a member of the House of 
Representatives of the United States, Governor of the State 
of Virginia, Senator of the United States, Vice-President of 
the United States, from which, by the death of General Harri- 
son, and through the operation of the Constitution, he was 
elevated to the Chief Magistracy of the land. Noi', sir, did his 
career end even there. When secession began and presaged 
the storm which is now sweeping over the land, he was sent to 
the Convention of Virginia, and by that body to the Peace Con- 
gress, over the deliberations of which he presided ; thence to 
this Congress, and afterwards was elected by his constituents 
to the House of Representatives of the Confederate Congress, 
soon to assemble in this place. 

'" But, full as was his life of honors, it was not more distin- 
guished by them than by its achievements. From the com- 
mencement of his public career, he distinguished himself in 
whatever body he was serving, and by his eloquence and 
ability won an honorable place in the estimation of all with 
whom he associated. An advocate of the doctrines of the 
State Rights school of Virginia, he for the most part adhered 
to those doctrines with consistency throughout a long and ardu- 
ous career. Few men exerted themselves more to preserve the 
Constitution of the United States. He was among the first of 
our public men who, with the great Calhoun, declared that "the 
Constitution and the union of the States was one and insepara- 
ble." From the period of the Nullification controversy, from 
the time when he gave his solitary vote against the Force Bill 
in the Congress of the United States, to his last appearance in 
Washington at the Peace Conference, he declared the Union 
and the Constitution must live or perish together. 



296 SEVEN DECADES OF THE UNION: 

" ' He exerted his utmost powers to preserve the Constitution 
and the administration of the executive affairs of the United 
States. Forced to choose between the desire to gratify the 
wishes of his personal friends, who had elevated him to the 
office, on the one hand, and a sense of constitutional obligation 
on the other, he determined finally to sacrifice the friends with 
whom he had been associated. From that time forward it was 
his lot to administer the affairs of the nation, over which he 
presided in the midst of the severest party struggles the coun- 
try had ever known, without the cordial support of either 
great political division by which the people were then divided ; 
and he had to discharge his high duties in the face of such 
difficulties as had never been encountered by any of his pre- 
decessors. But, in despite of that spiint, he called around him 
some of the ablest intellects of the land, — Webster, Upshur, 
Legare, Calhoun, — who aided him in one of the most success- 
ful administrations which appears in the annals of American 
affairs. 

" ' It was this administration that added Texas, an empire, to 
the Confederacy ; and it was this administration that success- 
fully accomplished the Ashburton treaty between Great Britain 
and the United States. It was in this administration that Mr. 
Calhoun, in his celebrated letter to Mr. King, for the first time 
made a public demonstration in favor of the right of the slave- 
holding States to respect and protection ; and it was this admin- 
istration which gave a final and fatal blow to the United States 
Bank. But prominent, sir, as was this administration, it was, 
perhaps, not so distinguished as his closing career. He had 
already reached the year of threescore and ten, when he was 
called from his retirement to aid in making up that great issue 
of human destiny which is now being submitted to the arbitra- 
ment of trial, as it is said, between nearly a million of armed men. 
True to the life-long professions of the past, his first effort was 
to preserve the Constitution, and, if possible, to save the Union 
with it; but, when disappointed in that hope, none was more 
determined than he to cut loose his native State from its peril- 
ous connection with enemies in disguise — none more resolved 



THE SEVENTH DECADE. 291 

to make common cause with the South and take whatever might 
be the consequence of the act. 

" 'We all know he threw himself into the cause with his whole 
soul. Gentlemen here present will testify to the truth of what 
I say when I affirm that to the last he devoted himself to it 
with a courage that did not quail, with a hope that did not 
falter, and with a purpose that held out to tlie last extremity 
and relaxed not to the end. 

" 'Mr. President, it may truly be said that with John Tyler 
there has fallen a great man. I know, sir, that the death of 
any good man is the cause of grief to the friendly survivors ; 
and yet I feel I do not err when I say that my deceased col- 
league was as fortunate in his death as in his life. As a soldier 
on the field of battle falls, he fell at the post of duty. A life, 
when it was full of years and honors, passed away. He left us 
before age had bowed his form or dimmed the luster of his in- 
tellect ; when the future course of his life was about to promise 
him more of pleasure than grief. To-morrow we shall deposit 
him beneath the sod of that soil which he loved so well — on 
the beautiful banks of the James, where his slumbers will be 
soothed by the sound of its falling waters. Day after day, in 
the years yet to come, the morning and evening shadows shall 
lend a silent and varied charm to the scene ; and when her hour 
of struggle is over, Virginia, as she leans upon her bloody spear 
to contemplate the past, and beholding the rising glories of her 
day, will lift her gauntleted hand to brush away the tear for the 
loss of him who, in the decline of life, exhausted his dying 
energies in her behalf, and staked his life, his fortune, his repu- 
tation upon the result, which will bring her safety and honor. 
Sir, she will embalm his memory in her best affections, and 
hand it down to her generations yet to come ; and their chil- 
dren's children will transmit his honored name as an inheritance 
of princely value — an heirloom which has already run through 
more than two generations of distinguished men. 

" ' But it is not my purpose, sir, to draw a portrait of this 
great man. His is a character which men will choose to study 
themselves ; and they will seek it in the monuments of his own 



29S SEVEN DECADES OF THE UNION. 

creation rather than in the testimonials of his friends ; but per- 
haps, sir, it will not be deemed as usurping the historian's place, 
were I to say of him, he was kind and genial in all the relations 
of private life, and that he used the gift of the eloquence with 
which he was so highly endowed, in the public service, and not 
fur selfish purposes; that his faculties for usefulness seemed 
always to rise to the level of the demand upon them ; that he 
was most able to discharge his duty under the most difficult 
circumstances, and that he served his native State with a love 
and fidelity which are beyond all praise. 

" 'Mr. President, is there no useful lesson which we ourselves 
may draw from this occasion ? Is there nothing in it that will 
deepen our sense of the uncertainty of human life and the in- 
stability of human affairs ? Within how short a period has 
death sent its summons in our very midst ? Does not this im- 
press us with the utter worthlessness of the span of life allotted 
to any one of us, unless we use it for the purpose of preparing 
for another and better and more enduring state ? Do not the 
scenes passing before us impress on us still more forcibly the 
sublime truth, " The duties of life are to be preferred to life 
itself" V 

7 

"Mr. Rives, of Virginia, then spoke as follows: 
" ' I should be wanting, Mr. President, to my own feelings, if 
not to the memory of our departed friend, were I not to claim 
the privilege of an older and longer acquaintance with him, 
perhaps, than any other member on this floor possessed, to add 
a few words to what has been already so appropriately and 
eloquently said by my honorable colleagues. It is now some- 
what more than half a century since, a school-boy in the ancient 
city of Williamsburg, I first made the acquaintance of Mr. Tyler, 
then a law student of our common Alma Mater, preparing to 
enter upon the career of active life. It was thus given me to 
observe the whole progress of his orb in the heavens, from its 
first appearance above the horizon, through its meridian bright- 
ness and splendor, to its final and serene setting in the western 
sky, which we are met this day to commemorate. 



THE SEVENTH DECADE. 299 

" ' As a youu^ man, when I first saw Mr. Tyler, he was dis- 
tinj^-uirihed by the same blandness and courtesy of manners, the 
prepossessing address, and the graceful and captivating elocution, 
which we have all seen displayed by him in this hall. These 
qualities, the sure passport, in a government like ours, to popu- 
lar favor and public distinction, bore him through a succession 
of public employments. As soon as he was of age, he was 
elected by his native county of Charles City to the House of 
Delegates of Virginia. His first session in that body was, if 
I mistake not, in the memorable year of 1811-12, which wit- 
nessed the bold measure of the declaration of war made by the 
United States against Great Britain ; and the young legislator 
became thus closely identified with that high-spirited generation 
of American statesmen, who, succeeding immediately to the 
great men of the Revolution — the conscript fathers of the Re- 
public—continued, for thirty or forty years after them, to con- 
duct the affairs of the Union with a patriotism, ability, and suc- 
cess worthy of their noble sires. 

"'In the different representative assemblies of which Mr. 
Tyler was successively a member, he was brought into contact 
with the highest intellects of the age. In the legislature of 
Yirginia, he was a member of the House of Delegates with 
Littleton Waller Tazewell, Benjamin Watkins Leigh, Charles 
Teuton Mercer, Robert Stanard, Philip Doddridge, General 
Blackburn, and many others of the most gifted spirits of this 
ancient commonwealth. In the House of Representatives of the 
United States, he was contemporary with Henry Clay, William 
Lowndes, John Randolph, Henry St. George Tucker, John 
Forsyth, Louis McLane, and a host of other distinguished men 
who then illustrated the national forum. Being generally the 
youngest member of the body to which he belonged, and emu- 
lous of distinction, he was stimulated to the highest exertion 
of his powers by the living models of excellence with which he 
was surrounded, and his mind was thus kept in a perpetual pro- 
gress of development and expansion. 

" ' Trained and formed under these auspices, he proved him- 
self equal to all the various and arduous posts of public duty 



300 SEVEN DEGADES OF THE UNION: 

to which he was called by the favor and confidence of his coun- 
trymen. In the highest of them all, he gave an honorable proof 
of the elevation and magnanimity of his character, bringing into 
the leading Executive Departments the most towering talents 
of the country, to aid him in the administration of the govern- 
ment. The selection of such men as Webster, Calhoun, Legare, 
Upshur, and Spencer proved how far he was above the opera- 
tion of any unworthy sentiment of jealousy, or fear of being 
overshadowed in the public estimation by his official advisers ; 
while his personal management of several of the most delicate 
questions of his administration — I refer more particularly to his 
broad and comprehensive treatment of the question of the 
annexation of Texas, and the firmness with which he upheld the 
cause of constitutional republican government in Rhode Island 
against the outbreak of an unlicensed democracy — attested the 
large and matured statesmanship he had himself acquired in 
the schools of practical instruction in which he was bred. 

" ' But this is neither the time nor the place to enter upon a 
discussion of the merits of Mr. Tyler's administration of the 
Federal government, when, by a sudden and unexpected dis- 
pensation of Providence, he was placed at the head of it. No 
one would more earnestly have deprecated the revival of for- 
gotten controversies than himself. Among the qualities which 
most eminently and honorably distinguished him was an habitual 
kindliness of disposition, and a generous appreciation of others, 
even of those who were his political enemies and opponents, 
It was about two years ago, in this city, on a public and mem- 
orable occasion, he did himself the highest honor by a warm, 
spontaneous, and manly tribute to the character of a great man 
and deceased patriot, who had stood toward him in the attitude 
of a powerful and declared opponent. 

" ' In reviewing the eventful life of Mr. Tyler, we are led, 
almost irresistibly, to apply to him a descriptive epithet by 
which the Romans were accustomed to express a quality that 
ever inspired their confidence and admiration. By that epithet 
— felix — they did not mean to designate a person who was 
merely fortunatei but one who, by a happy combination of well- 



THE SEVENTH DECADE. 301 

tempered attributes, knew, in a measure, how to command or 
propitiate fortune. This sentiment was embodied by them in a 
maxim, tersely expressed by their great satirist — nullum numen 
abest, si sit prudentia. Thus it was with Mr. Tyler. By a 
rare union of prudence, good sense, and good temper, set off by 
the natural gifts of oratory and a persuasive address, he won 
the hearts of the people and commanded the favors of fortune ; 
and success waited upon him in every step of his public career. 

" ' Delegate in the legislature of his State, representative in 
Congress, Governor, Senator, Vice-President, President — he 
"sounded all the depths and shoals of honor;" and in every 
trust he acquitted himself to the satisfaction of his constituents. 
After having filled with honor the highest offices of the govern- 
ment of the Union — which sank, at length, under the degen- 
eracy and corruption of the times — he lived to take a leading 
part in the establishment of a new Confederacy for the South, 
which had all his affections and all- his hopes ; and as a member 
of this House, he gave his anxious labors to the great cause of 
securing and perpetuating the structure. 

" ' His duties as a member of this body engaged his deepest 
solicitude. Unwilling to withdraw himself from them for a 
single day without the proper and formal sanction of the House, 
he said to me, the day before the fatal termination of his disease, 
that, if he should be compelled to go home to recruit his health, 
as he should probably find it necessary to do, he wished me to 
apply to the House for leave of absence for him. A far higher 
authority, the great Governor of the Universe, has granted him 
that leave of absence — not from this hall merely, but from all 
sublunary concerns henceforward forever. He now rests from 
his labors ; but he has bequeathed to us the rich inheritance of 
his patriotic example and of his counsels. 

" ' This second admonition of the transitory tenure of human 
existence, with which, after so short an interval, we have been 
visited in this hall, reminds us most impressively that "the 
paths of glory lead but to the grave." But still it is not per- 
mitted to us to repine. "One generation passeth away, and 
another cometh ; but the earth abideth forever." Here, while 



302 SEVEN DECADES OF TEE UNION. 

we continue, we have our allotted work ; and as those who 
have gone before us have labored and toiled, so must we, in our 
turn, toil and labor, to carry forward the great schemes of 
Divine Providence in the moral government of the world ; and 
if we do so in humble submission to the will of Him who 
ruleth the destinies of men and nations, we, too, shall have our 
reward.'" 

The citizens of Richmond did honor to his remains in more 
than usual form of respect and reverence; and, in those dan- 
gerous times, when men in Baltimore dared hardly whisper in 
bated breath the name of a rebel with respect, there even tears 
were not suppressed, and his praise and the grief of mourners 
were spoken and sobbed out aloud over his departure. 

His will had been written more than two years before he 
died ; and several of its passages are so remarkably character- 
istic of the man that they are inserted : 

" My Will. 1. In the name of God. Amen. This is my 
last will and testament, written wholly with my own hand, 
with my name subscribed thereto, this 10th day of October, in 
the year of our Lord and Saviour 1859, whereby I revoke and 
annul all other wills and testaments heretofore made by me. 

" II. In the first place, I empower my dear wife to make out 
of my estate suitable provision for my burial, which I wish to 
be accompanied with no unnecessary expense. Let the people 
of this county [Charles City], whose fathers helped me on 
in my battles of life with a zeal and constancy rarely ever 
equaled and never surpassed, be invited to attend my funeral 
obsequies ; and let my body be consigned to the tomb in the 
earth of the county wherein I was born, there to repose until 
the day of resurrection. My wife will select the spot on 
'Sherwood Forest' [his residence], and mark it by an un- 
costly monument of granite or marble. I desire also that she 
will cause a suitable memorial to be erected over the remains 
of my father and mother, at ' Greenway,' should it not be 
done in my lifetime ; inscriptions both for my own and theirs 
will be found in the paper inclosing this." 



THE SEVEXTH DECADE. 303 

In the sixth item he provides, " I desire also that my wife 
will take good care of my faithful servants, William Short and 
Fanny Hall, so that their old aye can be rendered comfortable." 

A question was raised whether he was born at Greenway, 
in the county of Charles City, or at Warburton, in the county 
of James City. His will settled that doubt; Greenway was 
undoubtedly the residence of his parents, and there, too, was 
the birthplace and home of his nativity. There was the cradle 
and nursery of his infancy, the play-ground of his childhood, 
and there were the scenes which caught the first observations 
and experiences of which he was capable. 

In these touching clauses of his will he shows that beautiful 
amor loci which is the foundation of the amor j^o-triae, the 
ruling passion of his life, the warm, natural poetry of his com- 
position — that poetry which Campbell so sweetly sung : 

"There is a land, of every land the pride, 
Beloved by Heaven o'er every land beside. 
There is a spot of earth supremely blest, 
A dearer, sweeter spot than all the rest." 

His land was his country, his State was Yirginia, and in 
death he clung to "the earth of the county wherein he was 
born," — his "dear wife" to "select the spot," dearer, sweeter 
than all the rest, on " Sherwood Forest," and to mark it by an 
uncostly monument of granite or marble. 

As yet his body is interred at Hollywood Cemetery, near the 
remains of Mr. Monroe. It is due that the State of Virginia 
shall erect his monument. He belongs to the State. But let 
the people of Charles City not forget that they were affection- 
ately invited to his "funeral obsequies," and that they will 
but elevate and ennoble themselves by coming up every anni- 
versary of his birth to pluck out every weed which may intrude 
near his grave, and to wreathe his tomb with "immortelles." 



APPENDIX. 



COLLEGE OF WILLIAM AND MARY. 

It remains only to narrate Mr. Tyler's connection with the 
College of William and Mary, and to express the interest he 
took in her welfare. 

His Alma Mater is " full of years and full of honors," and 
has been the mother of instruction to pupils who have given 
birth to events of the greatest magnitude on this continent. 

For an epitome of her history we proudly refer to the " Sketch," 
prepared by the lamented Professor Morrison, prefixed to the 
latest published catalogue, entitled " College of William and 
Mary, 1693 to 1870." But in that epitome there is an important 
error. Why say from 1693? The college had its foundation 
before that year. As stated by the professor, in 1619 a large 
appropriation of land was made to endow a university to 
be established at Henrico for the colonists and Indians ; and 
it is also true that about the same time contributions were 
made through the bishops of London to endow a college in 
Virginia for the Indians, and in 1621 a subscription was made 
to endow the East India School at Charles City, and land and 
servants were allotted to it, and that this was all preparatory 
to the university at Henrico, and that Mr. George Thorpe, a 
gentleman of His Majesty's privy chamber, came over to be 
superintendent of the university, and was in 1622, with three 
hundred and forty of the colonists, including a number of the 
college tenants, killed by the Indians, But an important error 
was committed by the professor when he added, "This dis- 

20 ( 305 ) 



306 APPENDIX. 

aster, followed bj the troubles in the mother country (the 
revolution of 1642), and, at a later period, by the discontent 
and disorders in the colony, which were produced mainly by 
the arbitrary rule of Sir William Berkeley, the royal governor, 
and which culminated in Bacon's rebellion, prevented any re- 
newal of the attempt to establish a college in the Colony of 
Virginia till the revolution of 1688, which seated William 
and 3Iary on the English throne,'''' etc. 

Now, neither the massacre in 1622, nor the revolution of 
1642, nor the discontent and disorders in the colony, nor the 
arbitrary rule of Sir William Berkeley, nor Bacon's rebellion, 
nor any other cause, prevented attempts to establish a college 
in the Colony of Virginia till the revolution in 1688. Nearly 
thirty years before that revolution in England, the " Grand 
Assembly," held at James City, March 23, 1660-1, passed 
Act twentieth, entitled " Provision for a College," in these 
words: "Whereas the want of able and faithful ministers in 
this country deprives us of these great blessings and mercies 
that alhvais attend upon the service of God ; which want, by 
reason of our great distance from our native country, cannot in 
probability be alwais supplyed from thence ; Be it enacted, that 
for the advance of learning, education of youth, supply of the 
ministry and promotion of piety, there be land taken upon pur- 
chases foracoliedge and free-schoole, and that there be, with as 
much speede as may be convenient, houseing erected thereon 
for entertainment of students and schollers." This act was 
passed in the 13th Charles II. See II. vol. Hening's "Statutes 
at Large," p. 25. 

Again : at the same session of the Grand Assembly, Oc- 
tober, 1660-1, 13th Charles II., " Act 35th" was passed, entitled 
" A Petition in behalf of the Church." " Be it enacted that 
there be a petition drawn up by this Grand Assembly to the 
King's Most Excellent Majestic for his letters pattents to collect 
and gather the charity of well-disposed people in England, for 
the erecting of colledges and schooles in this countrye, and 
also for his Majestie's letters to both Universities of Oxford and 
Cambridge to furnish the Church here with ministers for the 



APPENDIX. 307 

present and this petition to be recommended to the Right 
Honorable Governor Sir "William Berkeley." See Id., pp. 30-1. 

Again " Att a Grand Assembly held att James Cittie, in 
"Virginia, 23d March, 1660-1, the following order was made in 
the Government of the Right Honorable Sir William Berkeley, 
bis ]\Iajestie's Governor, Mr. Henry Soanes, Speaker : 

"Whereas, for the advancement of learning, promoting piety, 
and provision of an able and successive ministry in this coun- 
trie, it hath been thought fit that a colledge of students of the 
liberal arts and sciences be erected and maintayned, in pursu- 
ance whereof his Majestie's Governor, Council of State, and 
burgesses of the present Grand Assembly have severally sub- 
scribed several considerable sums of money and quantities of 
tobacco {out of their charity and devotion) to be paid to the 
Sonorable Grand Assembly or such treasurer or treasurers 
as they shall now, or their successors hereafter at any time, 
appoint, upon demand, after a place is provided and built upon 
for that intent and purpose: It is ordered that the commis- 
sioners of the severall county courts do, at the next folio winge 
court in their several countys, subscribe such sums of money 
and tobacco towards the furthering- and promoteing the said 
persons and necessary worke to be paid by them or their heirs, 
as they shall think fitt, and that they also take the subscriptions 
of such other persons at their said courts who shall be willing 
to contribute towards the same. And that after such subscrip- 
tions taken they send orders to the vestrys of the severall 
parishes in their severall countys for the subscriptions of such 
inhabitants and others who have not already subscribed, and 
that the same be returned to Francis Morrison, Esqr." See Id., 
p. 37. 

Again: "At a Grand Assembly held at James City, March 
23rd, 1661-2, Anoq. Regni Rs. Carol. SCDI 14, Act 18th 
March, 1661-2, 14th Charles II., was passed to make 'Pro- 
vision for a College ' " 

Act 18th, the same as the act before mentioned, passed in 
1660-1. 

These were the acts of the Grand Assembly, and the orders 



308 APPENDIX. 

of the Governor and Council of the Colony of Yirginia, which 
founded the College of William and Marj. 

We see — 1st, that it was founded for the service of God. 

2d. For the supply of the ministry of the Established Church 
of England, and that it has always, from the beginning, been 
made the handmaid of the holy religion of our Lord Jesus 
Christ. 

3d. That it was begun and established for the advance of 
learning. 

4th. For the education of youth ; and 

5th. For the promotion of piety. 

We have no doubt that it was founded by the bishops of Lon- 
don, and was called " The College." It was appropriated for 
by the Grand Assembly in lands, subscribed for by the govern- 
ment. Council, burgesses, and contributed to by the Crown, sub- 
scribed to by the county courts and parish vestries, and by 
private individuals largely, and doubtless, under the regular 
clergy of the Church of England, was the only college where 
any regular, liberal teaching was had for those of the colonists 
who could not send their sons to the schools of the mother 
country. It had no name but "Tlie Gollege,^^ and could not have 
had the name of William and Mary until after the revolution 
of 1688. Its charter and regular endowments were obstructed 
by the revolutionary and disturbing events both in England and 
in the Colony ; and it had no charter until the General Assembly 
begun at James City, the tenth day of October, in the fifth 
year of the reign of William and Mary ; but it had endowments 
and was begun as early as 1660-1. 

That the college existed prior to 1693 is clearly implied by 

" Act III. October, 1693— 5th" William and Mary, 

which was an act ascertaining merely " the place" for erecting 
the College of William and Mary, in Virginia. The preamble 
of that act recites the charter: — That their Majesties had most 
graciously pleased, upon the humble supplication of the General 
Assembly, by their charter, being dated the eighth day of 
February, in the fourth year of their reign, to grant their royal 



APPENDIX. 309 

license to certain trustees, to lualce, found, erect, and establish 
a college, named the College of William and Mary, iu Vir- 
ginia, at a certain place within their government, known by 
the name of Townsend's Land, and theretofore appointed by 
the General Assembly. And Townsend's Land, pr-eviously 
appointed as the place, was substituted, by the Middle Plan- 
tation, as tlie place for erecting the college to be at that place 
erected, and built as near the church, then standing in Middle 
Plantation Old Fields, as convenience would permit. (See 3d 
H. Stats, at Large, p. 122.) That place is now the spot of 
" William and Mary." 

The Grand Assembly in 1660-1 had enacted "that land be 
taken upon purchases for a College and Free Schoole, and that 
there be, with as much speede as convenient, houseing erected 
thereon," etc. And at the same session of October, 1661, a 
petition was enacted by the Grand Assembly to the King for 
bis "letters patients to collect the charity of well-disposed 
people in England for the erecting of colleges and schooles." 
And the orders made at the session of the Grand Assembly, at 
James Cittie, the twenty-third March, 1661, by the Right Hon. 
Sir William Berkeley, show that the Governor, the Council of 
State, and the burgesses of that Assembly had subscribed con- 
siderable sums of money and quantities of tobacco ; to be paid 
out of their charity and devotion to the Grand Assembly, or such 
treasurer as they should then, or thereafter, appoint, upon de- 
mand, etc.; and the commissioners of the county courts were, 
at their next following courts, to subscribe sums of money and 
tobacco to be paid by them or their heirs,— and their subscrip- 
tions, and those of private persons and of the vestries, were to be 
returned to Francis Morrison, who was made custodian of the 
funds. Again, the act of 1660-1 was repeated in the act of 
1661-2. Now, is it likely that, under these acts and orders of 
the colonial government, Governor, Council, and burgesses, 
especially urging " speede," and prompted by the bishops 
and clergy, both in the colony and in England, no college, or 
school, was provided without a charter? The act of 1193 
attests that Townsend's Land had previously been selected for 



310 APPENDIX. 

the site of .the college, which, as yet, had no name. The seat 
of the government was at James Cittie, and Townsend's Land 
was on, or near, York River ; and could it be there was no 
school called "The College" at or near the capital of the colony, 
at James Cittie, from 1660-1 to 1693 ? Townsend's was changed 
to Middle Plantation, and Sir William Berkeley had contributed 
to the college, notwithstanding his answer to the inquiries sub- 
mitted to him by the Lords Commissioners of Foreign Planta- 
tions, in the book of Escheats of the General Courts, etc., 1665 to 
1676. The changes in 1693 were merely from private contribu- 
tion and subscription to a public corporation, and from a custo- 
dian for the colonial government to regularly constituted trus- 
tees. The Grand Assembly and the council had commended 
the plan of the college "to Sir William Berkeley, the royal gov- 
ernor," and he had favored the order and promoted the subscrip- 
tions, notwithstanding his prejudices against free schools and 
printing. 

The twenty-third inquiry submitted by the Lords Commis- 
sioners of Foreign Plantations to Sir William Berkeley, governor, 
in 1670, and answered in 1671, was, "What course is taken 
about instructing the people within your government in the 
Christian religion ? and what provision is there made for the 
paying of your ministry ?" 

Answer: " The same course that is taken in England out of 
towns ; every man according to his ability instructing his 
children. We have forty-eight parishes, and our ministry are 
well paid, and by my consent should be better if they would 
pray oftener and preach less. But of all other commodities, so 
of this, the worst are sent us, and we had few that we could 
boast of, since the persecution in Cromwell's tyranny drove 
divers worthy men hither. But I thank God there are no free 
schools nor printing, and I hope we shall not have these hun- 
dred years ; for learning has brought disobedience and heresy 
and sects into the world, and printing has divulged them, and 
libels against the best government. God keep us from both !" 
(33 2d Hening's Stats, at Large, p. 517.) 

This shows how aristocratic was the prejudice of the royal 



APPENDIX. • 311 

governor against popular instruction, and how anxious he must 
have been to establish "a college of liberal arts and sciences" — 
liberal to the gentlemen and very illiberal to the people. His 
ideas of '■^ free schools" and "learning" and "printing" must 
have been a forecast of Bacon's rebellion, which ffve years 
later drove him from James Cittie, across the Chesapeake, to 
Old Plantation on the peninsula of Northampton. Here, too, 
we have the true idea of the modern meaning in America of 
the words " the best government." Mr. Hening, in a note with 
an index, says, " Nothing can dis{)lay in stronger colors the 
execrable policy of the British government in relation to the 
colonies, than the sentiments uttered by Sir William Berkeley in 
his answer to the last interrogatory. These were doubtless his 
genuine sentiments, which recommended him so highly to the 
favor of the crown that he continued Governor of Virginia 
from 1641 to 1677, a period of thirty-six years, if we except 
the short interval of the Commonwealth and a few occasional 
times of absence from his government on visits to England. 
The more profoundly ignorant the colonists could be kept, the 
better subjects they were for slavery. None but tyrants dread 
the diffusion of knowledge and the liberty of the press." — Idem, 
p. 517. 

There was no charter, doubtless, until the 8th day of Febru- 
ary, in the fourth year of the reign of William and Mary ; but 
we are authorized, we think, in claiming that " The College" was 
in existence from 1660-61. The charter constituted trustees of 
a corporation, but the public and private charity existed in the 
Grand Assembly, holding by the hands of its treasurer for the 
time being, and by Mr. Morrison, its custodian. The transfer 
of the charter of William and Mary by the trustees to the 
president and masters or professors was signed and sealed by 
James Blair and Stephen Fouace in the second year of the 
reign of George the Second, the said Blair and Fouace being 
the only surviving trustees, and was attested by several of the 
newly-appointed tru.stees, among the rest by William Gooch, 
Esqr., his Majesty the Lieutenant-Governor and Commander- 
in-Chief of the Colony, and Alexander Spottswood, then late 



312 • APPENDIX 

Lieutenant-Governor of the Colony. And this transfer shows 
that the " messuage" transferred was commonly called " The 
College,''^ that it was situated in the parish of Bruton, in the 
county of James City, near the city of Williamsburg. 

William and Mary, thus consecrated by time, is made illus- 
trious in its patrons, officers, chancellors, rectors, visitors, presi- 
dents, professors, and alumni. Dr. James Blair, of Scotland, 
an Episcopal clergyman, was the first president, and, as Mr. 
Morrison informs us, he was appointed commissary or repre- 
sentative of the Bishop of London in the colony in 1689. At 
the instance of the bishop, he came as a missionary to Vir- 
ginia in 1685. He was appointed president of the college by 
its charter, and deserves the honor, if not of founder, of placing 
the institution of learning on a permanent and eminent estab- 
lishment. His family are still numerous in Virginia, and its 
members well worthy of the first president of William and 
Mary. He was a good, great, and eminent man, who had the 
grace of God and the good of men so strongly in his heart and 
head, that he was enabled to contend with "powers" combined 
against his work and to baffle them all. He built up the col- 
lege from its first regular foundation, and deserves first to be 
remembered among the first of its patrons, under the authority 
and control of the bishops of London. 

The first chancellors, until 1764, were the bishops of London. 
In 1764 the Earl of Hardwicke was chancellor. From 1764 to 1776 
the bishops of London resumed that office. From 1788 to 1799 
George Washington was chancellor. The college held the office 
of Surveyor-General of the colony, and among those appointed 
by it to that office were George Washington, Zachary Taylor, 
the grandfather of President Zachary Taylor, and Thomas Jef- 
ferson. No chancellor seems to have been appointed from the 
death of George Washington until 1859, when Ex-President 
John Tyler, of Charles City, was appointed ; and to the day of 
his death he felt as honored in succeeding George Washington 
in that office, as he did in the Presidency of the United States. 
The visitors named in the charter were gentlemen of the highest 
rank of seventeen counties and of the capital in the colony, and 



APPENDIX. 313 

two of them in London. Those of 1T23 were such as Alexan- 
der Spottswood, Governor of the Colony, and Robert Carter, 
of Corotoman, Secretary of the Council and their peers. Those 
of 1758, such as the Hon. John Blair, President of the Council, 
Hon. William Nelson, and Hon. Thomas Nelson, also Presi- 
dents of the Council, the Speaker of the House of Burgesses, 
Peyton Randolph, Gent., of Williamsburg, Richard Bland, 
Treasurer and Speaker of the House of Burgesses. From 1761 
to 1763, such as Hon. Francis Fauquier; Governor William 
Robinson, Commissary; Robert Carter Nicholas, Treasurer of 
the Colony ; and George Wythe, of Williamsburg. Visitors 
elected after 1763, such as Right Hon. N. Berkeley, Governor of 
the Colony; Edward Page, Jr., of Rose well. Governor of Yir- 
ginia; Right Hon. John, Earl of Dunmore, Governor of the 
Colony ; Benjamin Berkeley Harrison, of Berkeley, signer of the 
Declaration of Independence, father of President William H. 
Harrison; Edmund Randolph; General Thomas Nelson, Gov- 
ernor of "Virginia ; Thomas Jefferson, President of the United 
States; James Madison, President of the United States; John 
Marshall, Chief Justice of the United States ; Henry Lee, 
of Westmoreland ; Littleton Waller Tazewell, Wilson Miles 
Cary, John Tyler, Senior; William Wirt; John Tyler, Junior, 
President of the United States ; Right Rev. J. S. Ravens- 
croft ; Robert Stanard, Senior ; James M. Garnett, Robert B. 
Taylor, Edmund Ruffin, Abel P. Upshur, George Loyall, Wil- 
liam C. Goode, John S. Millson, James Lyons, Right Rev. 
William Meade, William Crump, Tazewell Taylor, Right Rev. 
John Johns, Hugh Blair Grigsby. 

In 1859, Ex-President John Tyler was chancellor and rector; 
and in July, 1871, the Hon. Hugh Blair Grigsby, the gentleman, 
scholar, and eloquent writer and orator, of the blood of James 
Blair, the first president of the college, was elected unanimously 
chancellor, and the Hon. James Lyons, the eminent lawyer and 
citizen of Richmond, was elected unanimously rector of the 
college, to succeed another eminent rector, the Hon. William 
H. McFarland, who had removed out of the comuionwealth. 
The very bursars of the college have ever been gentlemen of 



314 APPENDIX. 

the most favorable standiDg, and her president and professors 
such men as James Blair, D.D., William Stith, the historian, 
Right Rev. James Madison, Dr. John Augustine Smith, Rev. 
William H. Wilmer, D.D., Rev. Adam P. Empie, D.D., Thomas 
R. Dew, Esqr., Robert Saunders, Right Rev. John Johns, and 
Benjamin S. Evvell, George Wythe, one of the signers of the 
Declaration of Independence, St. George Tucker, Judge James 
Seniple, Judge N. Beverly Tucker, Judge George P. Scarburgh, 
Rev. Charles Minnegerode, William B. Rogers, and Dr. John 
Millington. 

And a college thus organized and instructed by such men 
could not but yield the rarest riches of alumni. Before the 
Revolution there was a long succession of the most eminent 
colonial men who were proud to be called her sons ; and since 
her brood has been multiplied fourfold without loss of grade. 
About four hundred different names on her rolls have been put 
upon the rolls of distinction, and many on the heights of emi- 
nence, by her teaching and training. Not only was her teaching 
after the Oxford order of the Humanities, but her training was 
that of the most refined and urbane manners. 

Williamsburg was the site of the vice-royal palace, and her 
court was far more moral than that of Charles II , and quite 
as ornate in manners. The breeding and cultivation were of 
the old regime of knights, under the guidance of the Episcopal 
clergy ; and to this day there is a marked superiority of address 
among the old families and old servants even of Williamsburg 
over any other people, of town or country, in Virginia. She is 
so retired and ancient that " Young America" and modern 
manners have not yet fully abashed her gentle, soft, and pol- 
ished politeness, as elsewhere — almost everywhere in the land. 
It is and ever was one of the chief attractions of the sons of 
gentlemen to her halls of learning and houses of hospitality. 
No man of his day more kept up that " ancien regime'''' than 
John Tyler: plain, genial, polished, kind, gentle, affable, — 
young men were his proteges and pets, and he was one of 
their best n.odels. 

A part of the great good he did for his Alma Mater was to 



APPENDIX. 315 

protect her corporate franchise. When there was a strong 
spirit predominant, and justly so, to break down and annihilate 
everything like a church establishment, beginning with Patrick 
Henry's fight against the parsons, running through the latter 
end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth cen- 
turies, wringing from Episcopacy the Act of Religious Freedom, 
and abolishing the glebes and vestries, and making horse- 
troughs of the baptismal fonts of the Anglican Church, many 
erroneously urged that William and Mary was part of the 
establishment, — yea, was the very "red shawl of the Babylon- 
ish woman," — and were for depriving her of her charter, claiming 
that she was a State or public political institution, and might 
be abolished. Mr. Tyler nobly stood, among others, by her 
side, and maintained that, though she bad a burgess in the 
Grand Assembly, and was represented as a municipal corpora- 
tion in the convention even which formed the State Constitu- 
tion, which excluded her, for the first time, from representation 
in the legislature, yet she was founded on private subscription 
mainly, and stood safely on the ground taken by Mr. Webster 
in the case of Dartmouth College. There she has stood, and 
still stands, unassailable ; and it would be sacrilege to question 
her corporate rights now, after giving twenty-seven of her 
students to the achievement of American Independence, among 
whom were a Boiling, a Burwell, a Byrd, two Carters, a Clai- 
borne, a Cooke, a Cocke, a Dade, a Digges, an Eggleston, an 
Evans, a Harrison, a Mercer, a Monroe, a Nelson, a Nicholson, 
two Pages, four Randolphs, a Roberts, a Saunders, G. Smith, 
and Dr. James Lyons (father of James Lyons), names forever 
to be cherished. Besides her long roll of most eminent divines, 
lawyers, and physicians in private life, she has given to the 
country two eminent attorney-generals of the United States, to 
the House of Representatives of the Congress of the United 
States nearly twenty members, and to the Senate of the United 
States fifteen senators, to Virginia and other States seventeen 
governors, to the country one historian and numberless eminent 
writers, to the State and the United States thirty-seven judges, 
to the Revolution twenty-seven of her sons, to the army of the 



316 APPENDIX. 

United States a lieutenant-general and a score of principal and 
subordinate officers, to the United States navy a list of paladins 
of the sea, headed by Warrington and Thomas Ap Catesby 
Jones, to the colleges and University twelve professors, to the 
nation three Presidents, — Jefferson, Monroe, and John Tyler, — to 
Independence four signers of its Declaration, to the first Ameri- 
can Congress its President, to the Federal judiciary the most 
eminent chief justice, John Marshall, to the Federal Executive 
seven Cabinet officers, and to the Convention vt^hich framed the 
Constitution of the United States Edmund Randolph, its chief 
author and draftsman. In all, she has given to her country more 
than two hundred heroes and sages who have been pre-eminently 
distinguished in public service and place. These are wonderful 
facts, and their number and value, compared with the number 
of alumni, show her to be first in fruits, if not first in time, 
compared with any other college in America. Counting her 
time from 1693 to the present day, the period of her existence 
is one hundred and seventy-eight years; from 1661, two hun- 
dred and ten years ; in a word, for about two hundred years 
she has for and during the period of her existence yielded 
to her State and country, to mankind and the world, more 
than one jewel of the first water per annum, of inestimable 
value. Who would see that fountain of truth, of light, of 
honor, of law, and liberty fail ? 

John Tyler, Ex-President of the United States, was devoted 
to the task of keeping her full up to the mark of her memories 
of the past, and of her high calling for the future ; and the Con- 
gress of the United States will, doubtless, at its next session, 
repair liberally all the damages done by civil war to her vener- 
able walls and to her precious paraphernalia and archives. To 
use the eloquent eulogium of John Tyler himself, " Like an 
aged Nestor, this institution has stood amidst civil convulsions 
which have shaken continents. At the time of its erection it 
looked upon a country in the early infancy of settlement, con- 
taining a population in all the English colonies which was 
not greater than that which at this day is found in the smallest 
State of the Union. It beheld that population expanding over 



APPENDIX. 817 

regions bounded by the two great oceans, to oe counted by 
millions in place of the scattered thousands of that early day. 
It has seen the Colonies shake off the badges of puberty and 
put on the toga virilis. It saw the Congress before and after 
it had assembled under the Articles of Confederation, and 
those Articles substituted by the Constitution under which it 
is now our happiness to live. It re-echoed the words of the 
forest-born Demosthenes in 1765, asserting the rights of Amer- 
ica to be ' natural, constitutional, and chartered,' and in thunder- 
tones, in after-days, its walls resounded to the words ' Liberty 
or Death' uttered by the same eloquent lips. Itself an offspring 
of the revolution of 1688, its sons were the warm and enthu- 
siastic advocates of that of 1T76. 

"Under the influence of its teachings, its students threw aside, 
for a season, their volumes, and girded on the sword to do battle 
in the great cause of liberty. 

" The calm and silver-toned voice of Philosophy, heard within 
its walls, has been ofttimes hushed by the clangor of drums and 
trumpets. 

" At one time it gave reluctant shelter to the British troops as 
they passed to Yorktown ; and soon after its gates were opened 
wide to give willing and exultant reception to the troops, with 
their tattered banners, which followed Cornwallis to his last 
retreat. 

" Its walls were alternately shaken by the thunder of the 
cannon at Yorktown, and by the triumphant shouts of the 
noble bands who had fought and conquered in the name of 
American Independence. 

" The boy had gone forth with the surveyor's staff, which it had 
placed in his hands, into the wilderness of the West, and now 
returned the hero and the conqueror, and once more stood within 
its walls, surrounded by the chivalry of France and America, 
wearing on his brow imperishable laurels, and making the name 
of Washington famous on the rolls of fame. 

" If her catalogue closed with the names of those who belong 
to the dead generations, might not ' William and Mary' take 
her place among her sister universities, proudly and rightfully ? 



318 APPENDIX. 

But it bears the names of raea of living generations, who add 
to her renown. In the various pursuits of life they perform 
their several parts. The pulpit, from which are uttered those 
great truths essential for time and eternity, resounds with their 
eloquence ; while on the bench of justice, at the legal forum, in 
the State legislatures, in the national councils, in the active marts 
of commerce, in the pursuits of agriculture, in the tented camps, 
their names are honored, their attainments respected, and their 
opinions and examples quoted and followed." 

And now the question suggests itself. What has made this 
mother of minds, not so very prolific in the numbers of her sons, 
so rich and hardly equaled in the quality of their lives and per- 
formances? Our answer is, that she has ever followed the 
system of the Oxford instead of the Cambridge class of schools. 
She has ever taught the Humanities rather than Physics ; the 
abstract, not rather than, but as the foundation of, the concrete 
and practical. She has taught the divinity of Christ, and moral 
philosophy, and metaphysics, as based upon that divinity ; the 
ancient languages more than the modern ; history, rhetoric, 
logic ; the laws of right rather than those of matter ; and yet has 
never neglected mathematics and natural philosophy, chemistry 
and astronomy, and other sciences. She has especially trained 
a school of natural rights, and of constitutional law and its 
limitations ; and therefore has given to the world a man, 
whether Democratic or Federal in politics, the best to draft a 
constitution, as Edmund Randolph ; or to interpret it, as John 
Marshall ; the best to draw a declaration of independence or 
an act of religious freedom, as Thomas Jefferson ; the best to 
speak his mother tongue, as John Randolph ; or to write it 
purest, as Benjamin Watkins Leigh ; and the best to contend in 
the Supreme Court of the United States with William Piuk- 
ney, as Littleton Waller Tazewell ; the best to administer 
affairs of state, as Thomas Jefferson, James Monroe, and John 
Tyler. 

Let William and Mary, then, adhere firmly and persistently 
to the Humanities. Mammon, the sacra fames auri, has har- 
nessed the physical sciences to its car, and is running over and 



APPENDIX. 319 

crushing the moral and the abstract. We think it was Robert 

Letcher, of Kentucky, who said, " Virginia will die of abstrac- 
tions." His prophecy has been nearly verified by the moral and 
abstract dying of the practical and expedient of the age. It is 
not Virginia which is dying, but the vital being which Virginia 
gave to the social and political forms of America, which is 
dying for the neglect and want of the Humanities which her ear- 
liest and best schools taught to the State and the nation. 

It is a false philosophy, and diabolical, Machiavelian, and 
mischievous in the extreme, which teaches that anything is eX' 
pedicnt which is not true in the abstract, a priori. Laws, and 
the principles of laws, and rules, and reasons, studied theoreti- 
cally and applied knowingly by experience, can alone test what 
in the end is practical and expedient. Every neglect of those 
laws and principles must inevitably threaten any system, politi- 
cal, moral, or physical. It may seemingly succeed, temporarily, 
and pay best for the occasion, but in the end it invariably tends 
to derangement and destruction. We have written this memoir 
of men and events for seventy -two years, in vain, if we have not 
illustrated this truth, best promulged by Paley. If we would 
be truly practical and do what is ever expedient, we must be 
true in theory and definite in the abstract. The spirit of this 
age is to throw aside theory and the abstract, and to apply only 
what will pay for the time ; and if the free system of govern- 
ment which the sons of William and Mary mainly in part 
handed down to this generation, is to be restored and perpetu- 
ated, it must be by and through the schools and the pulpits, and 
they will add unto themselves the power of the press. The very 
doing of truth cometh to the light; and the Humanities alone 
can teach our children what truth is. 

Families, fathers, and mothers must carefully nurture the ele- 
mentary and academic schools, and the schools must foster the 
colleges, and the colleges must build up the University. We 
commend, then, to William and Mary a course and curriculum 
which we think will make her more than ever a nursing mother 
of our children and of our country and its institutions of free- 
dom. The fear of God and the love of man alone can maintain 



UL^ 



320 APPENDIX. 

a republic of equal rights, of law, of order, of peace, and of 
power. What William Penn said of government is true : " The 
best system in the hands of bad men is no better than the 
worst ; and the worst system in the hands of good men is as 
good as the best." Liberty lives not in the system of govern- 
ment, but in the wisdom and virtue of those who administer it 
and those who are governed by it. A vicious and corrupt people 
will not have wise and virtuous governors to administer their 
laws, — will not tolerate wholesome laws, and will not be gov- 
erned by them. The governors and governed must alike be 
trained to wisdom, virtue, and knowledge. The Avhole or a 
major part of the people of a republic must be leavened with 
these essential elements of its life, or it cannot live. And if 
we would restore the life of this constitutional republic, we 
must return as quickly as possible to the Humanities, and di» 
seminate them by all means throughout America. 



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